Latest News from Everycare
The UK’s home care sector is spending an extra £75m on petrol and diesel compared to a year ago, according to research by the Homecare Association.
The home care sector’s collective spending on fuel is up from £224 million a year in May 2021 to £299 million in May 2022.
Since May 2021, the cost of petrol and diesel has steadily increased, rocketing in recent months, with analysts predicting petrol could rise to as much as £2 a litre in the next couple of months.
Based on analysis of research by the consumer research website, NimbleFins, the Association found that an estimated 113 million litres are being used by petrol cars on home care visits a year and 60 million litres are used by diesel cars.
‘Dramatic rise in fuel costs since May 2021’
The Homecare Association, which represents home care providers, is urging the government to pay for a temporary fuel allowance to cover rising fuel costs for vehicles used to deliver home care, as well as reinstate emergency Covid-19 funding for care workers to receive full sick pay.
Jane Townson, the chief executive of the Homecare Association said: “We reiterate our call for the government to provide temporary grant funding as a fuel allowance to cover increased costs of fuel for vehicles needed to deliver home care.
“As we have seen, the UK home care sector requires an extra £75 million to cover the dramatic rise in fuel costs since May 2021.”
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The Health Secretary Sajid Javid has announced a 10-year plan which will include a focus on “prevention” of dementia and committing £375 million into research on “neurodegenerative diseases” over the next five years.
Speaking at an Alzheimer’s Society’s conference in London, Mr Javid told delegates the government’s strategy would look at the same four themes behind its reforms in health and care called the four P’s: “Prevention, personalisation, performance and people”.
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle will be prominent in the ‘prevention’ part of the plan after it has been estimated as much as “40 per cent of dementia is potentially preventable.”
Mr Javid said: “High blood pressure, physical inactivity, alcohol, obesity and healthy eating all have a part to play. We now know that what’s good for the heart is also good for the brain.
“So, we’re going to be very ambitious on prevention, because I don’t accept that dementia is an inevitable part of ageing. It isn’t.
“I want our dementia strategy to be a 10-year plan, not just five. Because we can only get to grips with long-term challenges by thinking long-term.”
The conference coincides with Dementia Action Week which runs from 16-22 May and is Alzheimer’s Society’s biggest and longest running awareness campaign. This year’s theme is diagnosis.
For more information visit homecare.co.uk
In 2020, 46,000 women died from dementia compared to 41,000 women who died in the same year from Covid-19, researchers reveal.
According to Alzheimer’s Research UK, dementia became the leading cause of death for women in the UK in 2011 and has remained at this position, including in 2020 at the height of the pandemic where fewer women died of Covid-19.
The charity’s analysis, The Impact of Dementia on Women, is calling for action as part of the government’s new Women’s Health Strategy and its Dementia Strategy. It’s now urging the government to deliver on its Dementia Moonshot promise to double research funding and convene a Dementia Medicines Taskforce to speed up progress in finding new treatments for this devastating condition.
‘This report shows that its impact is hitting women particularly hard’
Hilary Evans, chief executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “It’s shocking to see despite dementia becoming the leading cause of death for UK women more than a decade ago, this situation remains unchanged today. Dementia is devastating for every person it affects, but this report shows that its impact is hitting women particularly hard.
For more information visit homecare.co.uk
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has urged the government to remove all charges to immigration visas and set a minimum wage of £10.50 an hour for care workers in England to help alleviate the impact of workforce challenges.
The MAC report, which briefs ministers on immigration policy has put forward 19 recommendations, which it says will alleviate the challenges facing the social care sector, including recruitment and retention.
The National Care Forum (NCF) the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG) and the Homecare Association have welcomed the report and said this “reiterates some very important issues” which includes issues of underfunding and how this continues to “exacerbate challenges to providers”, high staff vacancy and turnover rates and the “impact of low pay and the care workforce challenges”.
‘We know the true value of care work is much more’
Vic Rayner, chief executive of the NCF and member of the social care expert advisory for the MAC said: “While a focus on the minimum pay for care workers in this report is a helpful contribution to this issue, the NCF has consistently called for an independent pay review for social care, which involves employers, commissioners, and employee representatives with a view to implementing a new career-based pay and reward structure which is comparable with the NHS and equivalent sectors and fully-funded by central government.”
The VODG is also urging the government to “embrace” the committee’s recommendations to fully fund a rate of social care pay above the National Living Wage.
Dr Rhidian Hughes, chief executive of VODG said: “At present, charities are prevented from improving pay rates because funding passed down by central government to local authorities falls woefully insufficient.
