The government's plans to provide free nursing care for people in care homes from this week are too complex and will have to be sent back to the drawing board, Help the Aged has claimed.
Tessa Harding, the charity's head of policy, said the plans, officially announced on Monday, were a 'nonsense' and full of anomalies. She also said the postcode distinctions between the UK's four nations, particularly Scotland's pledge to fund personal as well as nursing care, would also necessitate a rethink.
Ms Harding told HSJ: 'The government has really been digging in its heels over this one, but I think the anomalies between Scotland and England in particular make the whole thing absurd. It is a complete nonsense and they'll have to go back and reconsider.'
Under the£1.4bn package, around 42,000 people living in nursing or residential homes in England will receive free nursing care, defined as care given by a registered nurse and not including work done by a care assistant.
There will be three bands of nursing care, up to£35,£70 and£110 per week. The Department of Health believes that 10 per cent of people will fall into the£35 band and the remainder will be divided equally between the two higher bands.
There is also an unofficial fourth band, of people defined as requiring continuing NHS healthcare - effectively those who come above the highest band - who will have their costs met.
The current assessment process, seen as cumbersome and repetitive, will be replaced by a single joint assessment by health and social services. But the level of care required will be decided by a registered nurse.
Pat Shore, chair of the Royal College of Nursing Liaison and Discharge Planning Nurses Association, has been involved in training nurses to use the new assessment tool. She is critical of the timescale, saying: 'I have had to train all the nurses in North Yorkshire with guidance which was subject to change.We got the final guidance five days before it was due to be implemented. And though it is a simple assessment, it requires a skilled nurse, and is administration rather than patient care.'
The RCN, Help the Aged and a host of other charities including Age Concern and the Alzheimer's Society, are concerned that the public will be confused by the situation, with many people wrongly believing all care costs will be met - particularly because of differences in funding between England and Scotland.
But the DoH guidance is implicitly critical of the Scottish Executive decision to fund personal care, saying: 'The government believes that it is fairer to spend the£1bn cost of providing free personal care (something that will only ever benefit the better off) on improving services for all older people who need them.'
It adds: 'As a devolved matter, it is for the Scottish people to decide how best to spend resources on health services.'
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