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MORE than 500 older people are dying each week without getting the care and support they need, a charity has warned.
The latest NHS Digital figures show that there were 28,890 requests for support in 2021/22 by people aged 65 and over that were recorded as the person having died before services were provided.
Age UK said the “heartbreaking” figures equate to around 550 deaths a week – 79 a day.
The charity will write to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt today, calling on him to direct more resources to social care.
Age UK director Caroline Abrahams said: “There isn’t enough social care to go round and so some older people are waiting endlessly for help they badly need.
“It is heartbreaking that in the latest figures, more than 500 older people a week are going to their graves without ever receiving the care and support to which they were entitled.
“Nor can the blame for this parlous situation be placed on the pandemic, for while it certainly didn’t help, social care services were struggling to secure enough staff and funding in the years preceding it.
“At Age UK we are deeply concerned about the plight of all the older people with an unmet need for care, living alone, without any family or friends.
“We fear there are many tragedies playing out silently behind closed doors.”
Mr Hunt is being urged to address the problem in the upcoming Spring Budget, with the charity warning that millions more elderly people awaiting care are “struggling to go to the toilet, eat, get dressed or wash because they can’t do these things unaided.”
National Pensioners’ Convention general secretary Jan Shortt said the figures were “symptomatic of the way in which government decision-makers view care provision which for so long has been the poor cousin of the NHS.”
She said that investment in the social care sector is “peanuts compared to the billions cut from provision,” adding: “With no resolution on the horizon, the NPC believes it is time to campaign very strongly for a National Care Service, free at the point of need, funded by general taxation like the NHS.”
