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The Guardian, 15 Nov 2011

If the NHS and social care regulator is as poor as recent evidence seems to suggest, why doesn't Andrew Lansley's planned shakeup of the NHS address this issue? The health select committee expressed grave concerns about the regulator's performance more than a year ago and again recently, and it's likely the public accounts committee will form similar opinions at its hearing next month – joining consumer groups and trade associations in rare unanimity. Patients and care home residents deserve the best possible protection, and the present inspection body just doesn't cut the mustard.

Les Bright - Exeter, Devon

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 November 2011

Poor care of the kind uncovered by the EHRC is inexcusable. The search for efficiency savings in public spending has been going on for some years, and in this sphere translates into squeezing the time allocated to carers for assisting the elderly people they visit. But where have the inspectors, responsible for both local-authority commissioning and home care agencies' performance, been in all this? Caring for frail, elderly people is not an unregulated cottage industry providing a service of marginal interest – legislation has required regular inspection of these agencies for at least the past five years.

Les Bright - Exeter, Devon

New Statesman 21st November, 2011

Correspondence

newstatesman.com/letters

Letter of the week.

Don't forget about social care

The letter to the Prime Minister (Leader, 14 November) and associated articles make a good, overdue start on exposing the reasons why so many of us continue to have serious doubts about the Health and Social Care Bill going through parliment. But in a year that has seen far to many acccounts of appalling care and dereliction of duty by the inspection body, you missed the open goal. Redesigning management systems in the name of "liberating the NHS" (the title of the white paper) is at best a distracting displacement activity and at worst a betrayal of the purpose of our health-care system- to look after people in times of ill health. Sadly, in avoiding any mention of social care - the second part of the title of the bill - you fell in with the view expressed more that 20 years ago by the architect of the care system: "Community care is everybody's distant relative but nobody's baby." The NHS can only be fixed when seen as part of a wider system that supports people before, during and after treatment by health professionals.

Les Bright - Exeter, Devon

BCD Care Associates

For independent advice and support

CQC - RECOGNISING EXCELLENCE IN ADULT SOCIAL CARE

BCD says ' CQC should concentrate on regulating to ensure that basic standards are met by all providers - not devise awards for excellence for the few'. The idea that CQC, the health and adult social care regulator, should spend time and money on devising a scheme to bestow excellence on the best care providers just at a time when the public seems to have lost confidence in the regulator's ability to maintain even minimum standards of care is hard to believe. However, BCD was pleased to comment on the consultation document published by CQC on the scheme.....view in pdf