NHS and social care

[SingaSong12]

I live in England, following a thread about how the NHS is coping and what the problems/solutions are and a lot related to lack of social care.
I asked on that thread about any experiences from Scots with joint funding of NHS/social care. Posting this as I didn't get response.
I know that there is a winter crisis in Scotland as well - do you think that joint services have/will make a difference to this crisis or more generally?

(Sorry I tried to do research but can't work out whether joint funding or services is in place or not)

As far as I am aware in Scotland the social care budget and the NHS budget is combined. This means the potential for dispute between the local authority and the NHS over who pays for care is removed. However resources are limited and I suspect that getting care in place is not always easy.

I can only speak from my own experience of dealing with my own elderly mother. She ended up in sheltered housing with a decent care package in place for her final few months. The GP was excellent and social services were really helpful but it did require me to advocate and argue the case. I don't know what happens to people who have no-one to speak for them.

I can contrast the situation here in Scotland with that of my late FIL in England as a terminal cancer patient - the whole process seemed to be far more problematic and it seemed to be more difficult to get care in place. However that may have been more to do with in-laws resistance to help.

While it appears that the situation is better in Scotland the "free personal care" thing is a bit of a red herring. My mother didn't really need help with feeding - she needed someone to do her cleaning and shopping but that's not funded so she had to pay for that herself. I think had she not died when she did she would have needed residential care - and she'd have had to sell her house to pay for that.

In short I think the combined budget does avoid bed blocking while NHS and local authorities argue about who's going to pay but it will not solve the larger problem of paying for the care of an increasingly aging population.

Hope that helps

It's only part of the budget which is combined, so acute hospitals still have their own budget under the health board. It's also being implemented in different ways in different places - with different levels of budgetary autonomy being given to the new partnerships. In some places it's working well- in others not so much.

www.holyrood.com/articles/inside-politics/health-and-social-care-integration-year-still-early-days

Good article here I think which covers a lot of the issues.

I work in an integrated community team in Lanarkshire and moved from one in Glasgow which worked more closely with Social Work and Homecare which was definitely easier for the patients in my opinion/experience. Free personal care for the elderly has been a godsend for the patients I see and there is scope for patient choice with self directed support but that is complex for some to manage.

Thanks - it's interesting to find out what's happening- the article states a 5% drop in delayed discharge, though too early to know reasons

I had forgotten about personal care being free - changing to an integrated funding system would be harder if there still need to be decisions on what is nursing and what is personal care.