30,000 OAPS dying each year waiting for help from our broken care system

ALMOST 30,000 pensioners die every year waiting for help from the broken social care system, figures show.

- Giles Sheldrick

Campaigners fear many of those begging for assistance spend their final weeks and months in distress and discomfort because council supply simply cannot meet demand.

Age UK analysed NHS data which shows 28,655 over-65s died waiting for social care in 2022-23 or 79 deaths a day. 

The numbers are broadly similar to those from a year earlier, suggesting no progress.

Caroline Abrahams, Age UK charity director, said: "Good social care makes a big difference whenever it is needed, but never more so than in the last weeks and months of our lives.

Attention

"Social care lacks sufficient funding and, in many places, trained staff, and unless and until we get a government that's prepared to face up to these problems older people will continue to go to their graves without receiving the social care they are due."