Adult Social Care

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

As I said, we have put in place £162.5 million-worth of funding and it has only just gone into councils’ bank accounts. We expect councils will use the funding to retain and grow the workforce.

Earlier I mentioned the all-party parliamentary group on social care, which I set up four years ago with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh). At that time the vacancy rate was 122,000, even greater than it is today. We have 1.54 million people working in care, and the need grows by 1% to 2% every year because of changing demographics.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The number of stranded and super-stranded patients at Kettering General Hospital has recently been increasing. Thankfully it is not at the level it was a few years ago, when as many as 200 of the 550 beds were occupied by stranded and super-stranded patients. They are mainly elderly and vulnerable people who, as the Minister will recognise, should not still be in hospital because they have completed their medical treatment. They need to be placed in an appropriate social care setting or at home with appropriate social care support. When can we expect firm proposals from the Government to address this issue? Unless we can get these very vulnerable people into the care they need, not only will it make life very unhappy for them but it will be extremely expensive and will clog up our NHS.