THERE has been much in the national press recently about the crisis in social care provision to our increasingly elderly population.

Additionally it has been claimed that it is the old and infirm who have been causing bed shortages for patients awaiting operations. It has been acknowledged that the key way to resolve this crisis is for the local adult social services department to work with the NHS to arrange alternative care arrangements in the community for the elderly patient.

I know from my family’s experience that in Pembrokeshire, there is an excellent working relationship between the NHS and our County Hall-based social workers.

However, I am concerned about the cutting of corners in the quest to keep hospital beds unblocked.

Data on the BBC News website says that, in England, councils account for 21 per cent of the social care provision with the patient themselves paying 12.5 per cent and their family and friends accounting for 37.5 per cent with the remaining 30 per cent of the elderly unable to afford help. There were 199,300 patients in English nursing and care homes with 452,900 patients at home receiving nurse house visits up to the end of March 2016.

My mother has chronic leg ulcers and is unable to walk unaided. She is in need of physiotherapy; support usually available at South Pembs Hospital and it is something she has received in the past.

Doctors have been concerned about the concentration of her blood and in recent months it has been dangerously low, making her feel weak and confused. She should be in hospital.

Instead however, Pembrokeshire County Council have, at the request of the local NHS, subsidised her to live for an unspecified period of time in a local care home as there are no beds currently available at South Pembs.

She has been there now for one month and quite frankly it has been a waste of the council’s money. Physiotherapy has yet to materialise, the occupational therapist was unimpressive with her approach, Mum’s blood concentration continues to be dangerously low and much to my dissatisfaction she has been coming out in bruises and rashes due to incompetent mismanagement of her medication by the random array of GPs she has been visited by in the care home.

Medication that has been good for her has been stopped and been replaced by drugs her records should say she is allergic to. It seems to me that in this non-hospital arrangement nobody knows what they are doing and my mother, caught in the middle, is no better off than she would be if she was receiving the help my sister was giving her in the family home.

We asked for medical intervention and we have ended up with a costly, time wasting derivation of what we were doing with no cost element.

The problems facing society with this issue are inevitably going to increase in future decades and Pembrokeshire is ahead of the game with its collaboration.

Some areas of the UK are still evaluating how their bodies will approach the situation. My family should be glad that we have council intervention available in an economy where not everyone receives help due to the costs involved.

However I believe the hospital- alternative service provided is not a patch on the proper rehabilitative and medically beneficial care that we come to expect as a basic entitlement.

Care homes risk becoming expensive dumping grounds full of people who need only short term fixes.

CHRIS WILLIAMS

Pembroke Dock