Social Care

Mary Robinson Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury). I start by declaring an interest as my husband is the non-executive director of a social enterprise in the area of social care. I join my colleagues and others across the House in welcoming this debate, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak about this hugely important issue.

I am a great believer in localism. I was a borough councillor for several years before entering this place. As a member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, I have worked with colleagues to examine the issue and to question Ministers on the provision of social care across the country, and I am pleased that the Committee published a report on adult social care last year.

The health and social care devolution settlement to my region of Greater Manchester provides us with an opportunity to tackle health issues from the ground up, and I commend the Government for the considered approach that they have taken since the proposal’s inception several years ago. Greater Manchester is home to almost 3 million people across 10 local authorities. However, according to the Office for National Statistics, life expectancy in Greater Manchester is among the lowest in the country, so the challenges that we face are significant. If things continue as they are, we will be facing an unsustainable £2 billion shortfall in health funding by 2021.

Greater Manchester faces a number of issues, one of which is dementia. Members will know from the experiences of the constituents they meet in their surgeries, or perhaps through their own personal experience, that dementia causes immense suffering to individuals and their families. Dementia is now a leading cause of death in the UK, and it is estimated that there could be nearly 35,000 people living with dementia in Greater Manchester by 2021, a third of whom will have symptoms so severe that they will require 24-hour care. Dementia care is estimated to cost around £375 million a year in Greater Manchester alone.

Similarly, strokes are the fourth biggest killer in the UK and a leading cause of disability. More than 100,000 strokes happen in the UK each year, with someone suffering from one every five minutes. In Greater Manchester, there are 6,000 a year. However, swift, specialist treatment can make a huge difference. My constituency has the No. 1 rated stroke unit in the country. Stepping Hill hospital’s stroke centre has high-tech scanners to detect blood clots in the brain and uses emergency clot-busting drugs to break them down. It also provides stroke patients with a full rehabilitation programme and a high-tech sensory garden in which they can recover.

Hospitals are an important part of our healthcare provision. However, if we were to start again, given the sort of patient environment we have today, perhaps we would not design a system like that developed in 1948, which focused on acute hospitals. We would create a system much more focused on health and tackling long-term conditions such as dementia, heart disease and diabetes, all of which account for 70% of the NHS’s total spend. As a result, much more needs be done in the community. A key aim of combining the health and social care budgets is to reflect that trend. Care needs to be moved out of hospitals into the community.

To provide effective support, integrated services are vital. A key Government aim from the outset has been to enable care to move out of hospitals and into the community, closer to where patients want to be—in their own home. An example of that strategy in practice is the “Stockport Together” programme, through which five health and care organisations have come together to integrate health and social care services across the borough. Stockport is proud of the fact that we are one of the healthiest places to live in the north-west, but the rising number of older people in Stockport means that there will be a greater need for health and social care support both in the short and long terms. Currently, one person five in Stockport is over 65.

NHS and social care organisations in Stockport, led by the local clinical commissioning group, have come together to tackle fragmented care by joining up services for older people in supported living schemes and care homes. I appreciate that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to addressing social care—what works for Stockport might not work for areas such as Salford, Sale or Stretford—so this is not about reducing the amount of money spent on care, as Members sometimes assert; it is about investing it in a smart way to ensure that we can meet the increased care needs that we face. The “Stockport Together” programme has demonstrated that, by joining up the arms of local government and health providers, we can reduce the number of ambulance call outs to falls and reduce the number of people in hospital who could be treated at home.

The Greater Manchester combined authority has £6 billion of devolved funding at its disposal, and I hope part of that will be channelled into primary care to facilitate early assessments and to support patients newly diagnosed with dementia. Doing so would have a positive knock-on effect. By focusing on community care we can reduce emergency admissions and care home placements, and relieve the pressure on our local hospitals.

The integration of health and social care in Greater Manchester is a significant milestone in tackling the challenges I have outlined, and I look forward to the publication of the Government’s Green Paper on this hugely important subject.