The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has today revealed proposed reforms to the NHS in England. Ruth Driscoll, Head of Policy and Public Affairs for England at the end of life charity, Marie Curie, responded to the news:
"It is hard, against the backdrop of a 40 percent increase in home deaths and over 20,000 deaths in care homes during the pandemic, to ignore the Government's silence on the underfunding of social care today. While we welcome the proposed reforms to the NHS in this White Paper, we are still waiting to see the Government finally grasp the nettle and deliver a sustainable solution on social care funding.
"There are proposals here that should be celebrated and will go a long way to improving the quality of life for people at the end of their lives. 'Discharge to access' along with a 'legal duty of collaboration' will make it quicker and easier for dying people to get home from hospital. We have seen how the switch to faster discharge during the pandemic has granted more people their dying wish to be at home. We cannot move back to a postcode lottery where red tape often results in families struggling to get their dying loved ones out of hospital and people needlessly dying in hospital when they want to be at home.
"It is right to press on with these reforms, but as a provider of both health and social care for the last 73 years, we can see, first-hand, that the Government's ambition must go further. To truly put people with terminal illness at the centre of reform, sustainable funding for social care must be an urgent priority."