2 Million Older People Have Unmet Social Care Needs: Age UK

File photo of the hands of an elderly woman dated Oct. 7, 2013. Peter Byrne/PA Wire

An estimated two million older people have some unmet social care need, up from 1.6 million last year, a charity has found.

Age UK analysed data from the Office for National Statistics and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and found that large numbers of people over the age of 65 are struggling to perform at least one Activity of Daily Living (ADL) by themselves.

The charity’s report published on Friday found that out of the 11 million people aged over 65 in England, 1.1 million (10 percent) have difficulty dressing, 640,000 have trouble bathing, and 600,000 have difficulty getting out of bed. Other ADLs that the charity warned seniors are struggling to do on their own include walking across a room (5 percent), going to the toilet (4 percent), and eating (1 percent).

Age UK warns that with unmet care comes the risks of older people getting injured, such as having a fall, and ending up at A&E where they could spend a long time waiting for treatment. They then become stuck in a hospital bed because of a lack of community-based care, “creating huge problems for hospital managers and undermining their own chances of making a good recovery.”

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said, “Some of the findings in our new report are frightening, in that they show how badly our health and care system is currently failing some older people, the oldest old especially, despite the professionalism and commitment of many kind and dedicated staff.”

The charity has called for social care reform, with Abrahams saying, “These older people do not have time on their side and it is above all for their sake that we would urge the Government to work with the NHS, local government and charities like Age UK too, to chart a path to a better future for health and equally for social care.”

Services Not Keeping Up With Demand

The report warned that the current system is under-prepared for the growing older population with the availability of health and care services not keeping up with demand.

For example, the number of people over 75 has grown by 18 percent since 2017. But the report found that despite this growth, fewer older people are receiving local authority long-term care—whether that be community, residential, or nursing care—with the number of seniors receiving care falling by 1.1 percent from 548,450 in 2019/2020 to 542,545 in 2022/2023.

The number of full-time GPs is also not keeping pace with the growth in numbers of people aged 75 and older—who are more likely to need some form of primary care support—with the number of full-time equivalent GPs and trainee GPs increasing by just 2.5 percent between March 2023 and March 2024.

District nurses are also central for at-home care support for the elderly, but their numbers have declined by 17.5 percent between 2014 and 2023. A lack of at-home support could see problems like pressure sores become serious and require acute care in hospital.

Childless Older People

Unmet care needs are likely to be exasperated in the future with the growing number of older people without adult children to care for them.

The report found that the number of over-65s without adult children will reach two million by 2030, with the number of single and childless older people needing care projected to increase by 80 percent by 2032.

Adult children provide a significant proportion of unpaid care to their parents, with the figure at 28.8 percent in England in 2021.

The report by Age UK comes after a report by Lord Ara Darzi found widespread problems in the NHS. Issues include the quality of cancer care in the UK having fallen behind other countries, waiting times for hospital procedures having ballooned in 15 years, and waiting times at A&E having caused thousands of extra deaths annually.

Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting also said this week that the crisis in social care is adding to the problems already facing the public health service.

Responding to the report, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said the government would fix public health and social care through its 10-year health plan “centred on our three core shifts: from hospital to community; analogue to digital; and from sickness to prevention.”

The spokesperson continued, “We are committed to building a National Care Service, underpinned by national standards and delivered locally, to ensure that everyone can get the care they need.”

PA Media contributed to this report.