Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Whately and Catherine West(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. You won’t get your turn if you shout from there.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)
We know that winter is hard for the NHS, as it is for other health systems. That is why we started planning for this winter earlier than ever before—back in January, when we published our urgent and emergency care recovery plan, which funds more beds and new ambulances for our NHS, funds more social care in our communities, joins up care, and makes the most of technology, so that more people can get the care they need when and where they most need it.
Catherine West
Two accident and emergency departments serve patients in Hornsey and Wood Green. One is now serving double the number of visits by patients and is buckling under the pressure; and the other has seen 4,000 extra patients this year compared with last. What are the Government going to do about overcrowding in accident and emergency?
Helen Whately
The hon. Member is right that our hospitals are busier; we are seeing more patients in A&Es. That is why we are doing two things with our work on urgent and emergency care. One is providing more capacity—more hospital beds, more hours of ambulances on the road, and more capacity in social care to help with discharges. We are also doing things differently by seeing more people out of hospital, avoiding people coming to hospital unnecessarily, and providing more care at home; for instance, our 10,000 “hospital at home” beds are helping people recover at home, which is better for them and better for the system.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Whately and Catherine West(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Helen Whately
My right hon. Friend makes an important point, and this is exactly why work is going on to increase the number of defibrillators across the community, for instance, in villages such as his. Many villages will already have them. We are also supporting the NHS to train community first responders to make sure that there are people all across the community who have the skills to do CPR— cardiopulmonary resuscitation—and use a defibrillator. I look forward to being able to announce shortly a new initiative that will mean further defibrillators across our communities.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Helen Whately)
We are already putting social care reforms into practice. For instance, we want care providers to adopt digital care records, and more than 50% have already done so. I am determined to shine more light on our social care system, so our new Care Quality Commission-led assurance of local authorities’ social care duties will start in April.
Catherine West
One of the worst vacancy rates across the NHS is that of geriatricians. What urgent action is the Minister putting in place to ensure that people either at home with domiciliary care or in social care settings are seeing a geriatrician consultant regularly? If there is a shortage, which I believe there is, what action is she taking to have more doctors train as geriatricians?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Whately and Catherine West(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The Minister for Care (Helen Whately)
Throughout the pandemic, we have had to strike a balance between protecting people from this cruel virus and social contact. Nowhere has this been harder than in care homes. That is why I am so pleased that, from 8 March, we will be enabling care homes to open up carefully to more visiting. Our guidance will set out how residents can have a named person for repeat visits, with testing and PPE so that those visits can be indoors. We look forward to enabling more visiting as soon as it is safe to do so.
Helen Whately
The hon. Member makes an important point. We have been clear that we want to see care homes enabling visiting. We recognise that care homes are having to strike a balance between giving residents access to visitors and making sure that those residents are safe. Our guidance will provide further support to care homes on how they can make sure that those visits happen.
Catherine West
Care homes for older folk and disabled people are a basic human right. Given that care home residents—either in the care homes themselves or perhaps in hospital—account for a third of all deaths from covid, should the Government not be trying just a bit harder to provide the staffing that is often required for those extra visits? When will the Government lay out their plan to address social care, which is so clearly lacking and has been promised for about 10 years now?
Helen Whately
The hon. Member is right to say that visiting at the moment involves extra staffing—for instance, staff to supervise visits and to support the testing that we will be bringing in with the new visiting guidance. We have already provided funding to the social care sector that can be used to support the cost of visiting, and there is additional funding for extra workforce costs.