Supporting People to Age Well

Chair: Paul McGarry; Aide: Alison Jenner; Hall Aide: Lord Mohammed

Submitted by: 12 members 
Mover: Alison Bennett MP (Spokesperson for Care and Carers) 
Summation: Helen Maguire MP (Spokesperson for Primary Care and Cance

Conference notes that:

1. More than one in ten people over 65 years in the community live with frailty, and frailty affects over half of adults in hospital or care home settings.
2. The number of people in the UK over the age of 85 is set to double by 2045.
3. People who have kept the same GP for more than 15 years had a 25 per cent lower chance of dying than those with a GP relationship lasting a year or less.
4. For older people and those with long-term conditions having the same GP helps avoid hospital admissions, which saves the NHS money in the long term.
5. Where integrated cross-sector teams for older people’s care have been introduced, such as in Surrey Downs, there has been a fall in elderly admissions, shorter hospital stays, significantly reduced social care costs and 50 per cent fewer nursing home admissions.
6. A third of people over 65, and half of people over 80, fall at least once a year; falls are the most common cause of death from injury in the over-65s, accounting for more than 50 per cent of admissions to hospital caused by unintentional injury and costing the NHS £4.6 million per day and over 4 million bed-days.
7. Older people are more likely to live with neurological conditions, from dementia to Parkinson’s, impairing quality of life and increasing their reliance on NHS services.
8. There are 2.1 million unpaid carers over the age of 65, and 420,000 over the age of 80, navigating the difficulties of caring for a loved one whilst ageing themselves.

Conference believes that:

1. Supporting people to improve quality of life and maintain independence is better for them, and better for the NHS by reducing hospital admissions and procedures; by empowering individuals to improve their own health, creating healthier environments, and funding communities to decide how to better their health, society will be stronger and better equipped to manage the challenges of an ageing population.
2. Everyone who needs it deserves high-quality care and support to stay healthy in later life – that means fixing social care services and bringing forward measures that help people stay in better health for longer.

Conference reaffirms the Liberal Democrat commitment to:

1. Fix social care, including through sustained increases in funding for local authorities, which are the cornerstone of the social care system, a higher Carer’s Minimum Wage and by better supporting family carers with guaranteed respite care and a dedicated carer support service in every hospital.
2. Give everyone 70+ and everyone with long-term health conditions access to a named GP
3. Tackle loneliness and isolation by refreshing the national strategy for loneliness, to be overseen by a dedicated Minister for Tackling Loneliness; and by expanding social prescribing and investing in relevant community projects.

Conference calls on the Government to:

1. Introduce a dedicated frailty service in every community which:
   1. Ensures those arriving at hospital are identified by frailty specialists who coordinate tailored care, with an emphasis on providing care at home.
   2. Ensures patients can discuss with frailty specialists the outcomes they want for their health, living standards and independence, with ongoing care reflecting these preferences.
   3. Works with local government, voluntary and state sectors, as well as with family carers, to provide highquality tailored care in the community for patients with frailty or complex needs.
   4. Works in every nursing and residential home, bringing the NHS to residents and ensuring they have quality care, with an agreed care plan if they become very unwell.
   5. Ensures every frail patient and their carer has ongoing support from pharmacists, nurses and others for managing their health, including using medicines in the correct way.
2. Invest in a major expansion of step-down care and home-based reablement to ensure people are always guaranteed the timely intermediate care they need and are not trapped in hospital.
3. Prevent people needing to go to the hospital in the first place through regular health assessments for people with frailty or multiple conditions, overseen by a named GP who would coordinate with paid and unpaid carers, community nurses, therapists, and pharmacists.
4. Equip GPs with the time and resources to ensure effective, tailored follow-up care following these assessments, including low-level interventions to improve quality of life and health outcomes such as free ear wax removal, switching a patient’s incontinence supplies to reduce UTIs, or ongoing pharmacist check-ins for help with using the right medicine.
5. Expand the capacity for district nursing by creating alternative roles for people who retire from being paramedics; this would enable them to undertake home visits, urgent face-to-face assessments, post-discharge follow-ups, and support patients with complex or multiple conditions, working under the close supervision of GPs.
6. Implement the recommendations of the Neurology Alliance to ensure personalised care plans and care coordinators for everyone with neurological conditions such as dementia, Parkinson’s and MS, and to cut emergency admissions for these conditions by a third.
7. Support Community Dental Services to ensure those who are housebound, live in a care home, or have additional health needs can access dental care.
8. Roll out active ageing programmes and trips and falls assessments for everyone over the age of 80 to prevent falls, avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and promote healthy ageing.
9. Deliver fracture liaison services to every part of the country within a year so that osteoporosis patients can get the treatment they need, preventing long-term issues and costs to the NHS.
10. Establish a Commissioner for Older People and Ageing to promote and protect the rights of older people, ensuring policy across government departments takes account of the challenges of an ageing population.

Applicability: England

Mover: 5 minutes; all other speakers: 3 minutes. For eligibility and procedure for speaking in this debate, see page 10 of the agenda. You can submit a speaker's card online here or in person.

The deadline for amendments to this motion is 13.00 Monday 7 September; see pages 11-12 of the agenda for more information.

Those selected for debate will be printed in Conference Extra and Monday’s Conference Daily. The deadline for requests for separate votes is 09.00 Sunday 20 September; see page 9 of the agenda for more information.