On July 10th, 2022 my beloved 78-year old mum Jackie fell in the early hours, when getting out of bed, at her home in Barwell, Leicestershire. She pressed her alarm, which she’d been given as she’d fallen a number of times before, to alert her local council. I too was alerted at my flat in the nearby town of Hinckley. Myself and a friend got to mum, who was on the floor near her bed, and though breathing she said she’d hurt her ribs and was in pain.
We didn’t want to move her as that can cause more harm than good if not done properly. My friend called for an ambulance at 5.01am. Little did I know that we’d be waiting 11 agonising hours for help to arrive; first a paramedic in a car who checked mum over and further called for an ambulance which arrived shortly after that.
Mum was taken to hospital where she died two days later after an infection turned to sepsis. I’ll never forget those eleven hours with my mum; her in pain, distressed, pleading with me “son, when is help going to come?”
Every few hours I’d call 999 again, pleading with the call operator to send someone urgently. Finally, at almost 4pm, they were able to tell me that help was indeed on the way.
I’ll never know if my dear mum might still be with us if an ambulance had arrived much sooner. I’ll be wondering about that until my own dying day.
My mum deserved better than being left for hour after hour, on her bedroom floor, in pain, frail, distressed, in an undignified state. Our NHS, which I hold dear to my heart, failed her on that day and for that I shall never forgive it.
And my mum’s story is far from unique. In the almost three years since her death I’ve been campaigning for a better, properly funded NHS and, especially, for improved ambulance response times.
In that time I’ve read and seen countless other stories of families who’ve lost loved ones after long waits for an ambulance. Why is this happening?
In my mum’s case, I subsequently learned that ambulances had been backed up outside a local hospital on the day she waited for 11 hours, unable to offload the patients because there were people in the hospital unable to go home because there wasn’t an adequate care package for them at home or in the community.
So that is a whole system failure and more proof, were it needed, that the NHS crisis won’t be fixed until the social care crisis is fixed.
When this Labour Government came in I had at least some hope that, after fourteen years of the Tories leaving the NHS to crumble, we might start to see some. Improvements.
And whilst Keir Starmer and his man at the health department Wes Streeting claim some success on increased GP appointments and other things, ambulance response times and A&E handovers barely get a mention. And why? Because figures show they’re actually getting worse under Labour.
In a recent report the trade union Unison stated: ‘Paramedics across the UK are being forced to watch patients deteriorate and, in some cases, die, because they can’t hand them over to A&E departments quickly enough, according to Unison research.’
Their figures, collated from nearly 600 staff, shows long waits for patients in the backs of ambulances, sometimes for in excess of 12 hours.
Unison’s research states: ‘The UK-wide target for ambulance crews to hand over patients to A&E departments is fifteen minutes, with none meant to take longer than half an hour.
‘However, the data shows around one in seven respondents (16%) have waited outside emergency departments for twelve hours or more. And more than half (53%) have experienced delays of six hours plus.’
And this then leads to further problems as the ambulances aren’t then able to respond to further call outs in a timely manner, leaving people like my mum having to wait a clearly grossly unacceptable length of time for help to come.
Now we hear, as noted by Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey at Prime Minister’s Questions, it’s now suggested that the Casey Commission report into social care, itself not due for another three years, will then take another seven years to implement.
Are we really expected to wait until 2036 for much needed changes to be delivered? That means another decade of people like my mum being failed.
When Will Wes Streeting stop looking so smug and pleased with himself, spend less time on the airwaves defending this faltering and failing Labour administration, and focus on doing the job he’s paid a large salary from the public purse to do?
He needs to take the ‘reform of social care’ file out of the too-difficult pile on his desk and get on with making the necessary changes and providing the funding required now.
Patients waiting hours for ambulances to come and/or waiting to be handed over to A&E can’t afford to wait another ten years.
My mum was a beloved mother and grandmother, someone who was a ‘young’ 78 year old who loved going to see live music in her village with her friends. She was a regular at church and well-liked in her community.
She, and so many others, deserved better than being let down by a system which has itself been in need of greater care for far too long. In my mum’s memory I’ll keep campaigning until something is done, so no more people have to suffer like she did.