Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of social care assessment beds available to people on discharge from hospital.

The planning of hospital discharge, including for those who require social care support, takes place across a range of health and care services according to the needs of the local population. As such, no specific national estimate of the number of social care beds available to patients discharged from hospital for short-term care has been made. Multi-disciplinary teams, including services provided by community health, adult social care and care providers, work together to plan post-discharge care and manage capacity. We have established a national discharge taskforce to identify long-term, sustainable changes to reduce delayed discharges and ensure patients are only in hospital for as long as they need to be.