The Conservative leader of Oxfordshire County Council, Keith Mitchell, has finally admitted that the council has serious problems with delayed discharges, or “bed-blocking” (Oxford Mail, July 28).
His admission is welcome and marks, perhaps, a change of approach. The Cabinet’s member for adult social care, Arash Fatemian, has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the scale of the problem, preferring instead to point the finger at the NHS.
Mr Mitchell’s intervention will, I hope, result in the council taking a long look at why Oxfordshire is now the second worst performing local authority area in the country. He says that the council is “trying to operate a system that is just about bust”.
As leader for the last decade, he should take some responsibility for failing to get to grips with the problem.
Mr Mitchell also says that we have to “secure more funding as we have more elderly people”.
The council has for too long denied the link between funding and delayed discharges.
It was, after all, only in April that we were being told by a senior officer that “money will not solve the bed-blocking problem” (Oxford Mail, April 27).
There is little doubt that the problem has been made worse by the decision of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition to cut too far and too fast.
Local authority social care budgets have been badly hit. But the council’s own policies have aggravated things. It was obvious that the disastrous decision to cut the council’s own internal home support service would have a knock-on effect on delayed discharges.
This is further evidence that the most vulnerable are being hit the hardest by the coalition cuts.
Cllr RICHARD STEVENS, Labour Party spokesman for adult services, Oxfordshire County Council
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