More than a million vulnerable elderly people are missing out on help they need because of the dire state of the social care system, the UK’s spending watchdog has said.

The National Audit Office (NAO) called for urgent action as it published a detailed report citing evidence showing the number of people over 65 with unmet care needs jumped by some 200,000 in the last year alone.

The body said a spiraling turnover of poorly paid staff and increasing job vacancies are at the root of the problem, which is being worsened by ongoing deep cuts and fewer employees from the European Union since Brexit.

In particular, the NAO struck out at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for being unable to demonstrate how it is going to fund care for the elderly in the face of burgeoning future demand.

Ministers know working out how to pay for social care is one of the biggest challenges they face, but have been unable to bring forward clear proposals of how to meet it.

The report said the DHSC’s own modelling had shown the number of full-time jobs in the care system would need to rise by some 2.6 per cent per year until 2035 to meet increased demand.

To read more visit The Independent website.

They say a woman’s work is never done. Some believe that after Brexit that might be truer than ever. According to a leaked Department of Health dossier, a no-deal Brexit would mean a disastrous shortfall in care staff, which would force women out of the office and into unpaid social care roles, looking after elderly parents.

Many were infuriated by headlines such as “Women will have to give up work after Brexit”, and are asking why men don’t have the same duty of care. Their anger, while valid, misses the point. The headlines were clumsily worded, certainly; sexist, arguably. But were they true?

There are an estimated 6.5 million people in the UK caring for others, 40 per cent of whom are informally looking after an elderly or sick relative. The majority of those carers are women because, with women already shouldering the burden of childcare and enduring the pain of the gender pay gap, it’s often simply more economically sensible for a woman to cut her hours in the workplace further when care responsibilities increase.

To read more visit the Independent website.

The government should make social care free to everyone who needs it to take pressure off the NHS, former Labour and Tory health ministers have said.

Conservative, Lord David Prior and Labour’s Lord Ara Darzi also called for a “radical streamlining” of NHS organisations to roll back the damaging reforms implemented by former health secretary Andrew Lansley.

Abolishing means testing of social care would end the scandal of people with significant care needs facing bills in the hundreds of thousands of pounds for care, they said.

Cuts to social care funding under the Conservatives have seen the numbers of people receiving state-funded care falling five per cent a year. But it is costing the NHS £3bn a year to care for people in hospital who are fit enough to be sent home but haven’t got sufficient support, and free services for people with “critical” or “substantial” needs would help.

Elderly people in residential accommodation would still be expected to pay their own housing costs if they can afford to, as at present.

The report sets out how the NHS and social care system could deliver productivity savings which they claim, combined with the extra funding, would release resources to meet the rising needs of an ageing population and enable it to embrace medical and technical advances.

For more on this report read the full story at the Independent website.