Latest News from Everycare
While the ageing of society has become one of the givens in today’s world, less is made of the lived experience of the very elderly in society.
And although there is some suggestion that the much trumpeted steady expansion of the human lifespan has begun to slow down, the numbers of very old people continue to grow.
Despite this, debates about the resourcing of universal health and social care tend not to examine the costs associated with extreme ageing.
Yet the problem of chronic conditions and multiple morbidity is greatest among octogenarians and nonagenarians.
Very old age, if commented upon, is presented as if it were a kind of extreme sports competition. Centenarians are celebrated simply for reaching 100. Nonagenarians hit the news when they run a mile, climb a mountain or pilot a plane. Otherwise, silence reigns.
Yet the focus of most social care is on people aged 80 and over – a group for whom care is needed because health cures have failed them. The morbidities and infirmities that beset the extremely aged are not so much ignored as abandoned to the efforts of medical services and social care.
To read more on this story visit the Independent website.
Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has revealed that the government will be looking to try to keep people at home supported by home care services and increasingly the affordable option of Live in Care, rather than admit them to Nursing or residential homes as part of the ‘social care green paper’.
Matt Hancock told peers at the House of Lords Economic Affairs committee on Tuesday: “I think there’s a big opportunity to make social care better for the individual being cared for and better value for money by a shift from residential to domiciliary care.
Referring to other countries who have already made a ‘big shift’ he said: “A Norwegian minister told me that they had moved from essentially 80 per cent residential to 80 per cent domiciliary care.
Home care ‘cheaper’ and ‘better clinically’
Every patient held in long-term segregation or seclusion is to be reviewed by independent advocates to fix a ‘broken’ care system for autistic people and those with learning disabilities, health secretary Matt Hancock has announced. People with learning disabilities or autism are kept segregated in hospital for years.
Too many people with learning disabilities or autism are admitted to hospital unnecessarily or kept segregated in hospital for years with little say over their own lives or future.
Today’s publication of the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) report into the use of restraint and segregation in health and care settings, reveals poor staff training about autism and learning disabilities, a patient segregated for a decade and the segregation of children as young as 11-years-old.
Reasons for prolonged time in segregation included delayed discharge from hospital due to there being no suitable package of care available in a non-hospital setting.
The CQC has discovered patients’ interactions with other people are “characterised by distress and sometimes by the use of force by staff”.
To read the full story visit homecare.co.uk
A clinical trial has discovered a new type of dementia and has revealed that millions of people may have been misdiagnosed as having Alzheimer’s Disease – which shares similar features but is distinctly different.
The study, published in the medical journal, Brain, states that Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, or LATE, shares similar symptoms to Alzheimer’s.
However, whilst LATE mimics clinical features of Alzheimer’s, it also has very distinct differences, for example, it is thought to develop much more slowly than Alzheimer’s.
This could have significant implications for dementia care in the future. More precise diagnosis could mean more tailored dementia care, in a way that already happens in cancer care.
The findings could also offer some kind of explanation as to why finding a dementia cure has failed so far.
Dr James Pickett, head of research at Alzheimer’s Society, said: “Dementia is an extremely complex condition, that may be caused by many different underlying diseases. Though at an early stage, this research is taking a real step forward by proposing a new sub-type of dementia.
To read more about this story visit the homecare website.
