Is Health and Social Care for the Elderly in Crisis?

• Do they deliver what they were set up to do? Yes they do

• Do they meet the needs of the frail elderly? No they don’t

• Will they survive in the future? Not without “doing things differently”

• Is there a solution?

Yes. Perhaps, there is

Question Time Panel

Prof. Alistair Burns OBE NHS EnglandProf. John Young NHS EnglandDebbie Foster Alzheimer’s SocietyStephen McKie Family CarerBernadette Lawrence Suffolk County Council Adult CareDr Paul Kaiser Ipswich & East Suffolk CCGWillie Cruikshank Norfolk & Suffolk Dementia AllianceAlan Murray Health and Well-Being BoardDr. Paddy Fielder Debenham Project & NSFT

• How can Suffolk create an environment in which those with symptoms of dementia and their family members are encouraged to seek information and support from their GPs and Adult Care, and also treated with understanding and friendship?

• How can Suffolk fully engage with every significant population centre to provide local advice and information, support services, and therapeutic activities for family carers and those with the illness?

• Is it possible to realistically fund post-diagnostic dementia support services in the current financial atmosphere?

• How, following a significant hospital admission and stay, does Suffolk not only safely and securely discharge each and every frail elderly patient back to their home and community, but that they put the care into place so that that they are rehabilitated and do not rapidly reappear at A&E?

• How can Suffolk make its area health and social care services more effective and responsive to individual needs through integration and better working practices?

• How can Suffolk respond to the truth that new approaches are needed if the pressures generated by our ageing population on the NHS and Social Services are not to lead to their financial and organisational collapse?

• Why should an elderly person have to be admitted to a hospital, or stay in hospital any longer than is absolutely essential, when their health and recovery would be so much better in their own community among familiar faces?

• And, perhaps, the biggest question of all, what do we have to do to accept the challenge of caring for our ageing friends and relations?