Health MOTs for pensioners 'could combat £23bn social care crisis'

Health MOTs for all 65-year-olds could transform the social care crisis, a report has found. It concluded that routine checks at this age would better identify those who might need help in future years.

The report says Japan, which already has such a system, needs only half the number of care home places as the UK despite an older population. Dr Annie Williamson, a fellow of the Institute for Public Policy Research, which carried out the report, said: “Universal MOT-style assessments at 65 and early support could help people maintain independence for longer while reducing long-term costs.

“It would mean fewer care home admissions, better quality of life and more sustainable funding. As we grapple with rising demand and strained budgets, this kind of forward-thinking reform offers a way out.”

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The think-tank has set out a plan to stop the spiralling cost of adult social care which cost councils £23.3billion last year.

Its findings are supported by Sir Andrew Dilnot, the architect of reform recommendations more than a decade ago, who said the “yawning and indefensible gap in our ­collective welfare provision” must be addressed urgently.

The Casey Commission is currently looking at ways to implement a national adult care service, as promised by Labour in its election manifesto.

The first phase of its review is expected to be published next year, although recommendations will be phased in over 10 years. Social care leaders have raised concerns over the timeline.

This comes as levels of mental health are “deteriorating”, leading charities have warned, as a survey suggests one in four young adults in England suffer from conditions such as anxiety and depression.

There has also been a particular rise in mental health problems among women, while the proportion of people reporting ever having self-harmed has quadrupled since the year 2000, figures show.

Health leaders said the findings “paint a deeply worrying but sadly unsurprising picture” amid warnings that the system is “overwhelmed, underfunded and unequal”.

It is the first time since 2016 that data from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, which is carried out by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), the University of Leicester, and City St George’s, University of London, on behalf of NHS England, has been released.

It found that more than one in five people aged 16 to 74 had reported so-called “common mental health conditions”, which include generalised anxiety disorder, depressive episodes, phobias, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and panic disorder.

Problems were more common in young people, with more than a quarter of those aged 16 to 24 reporting having any of these conditions, up from 17.5% in 2007.

There was a particular rise among people in this age group reporting OCD, which rose from 1.8% in 2014 to 5.7% in 2023/24.

There was also a sharp increase in the number of women aged 16 to 24 reporting these mental health problems.

Some 36.1% said they had any one of the conditions listed, up from 28.2% in 2014 and 22.2% in 2007.

The hike among women was evident across all age groups.

Outside those aged 16 to 24, the biggest rise was among women aged 35 to 44, which increased from 22.3% to 29.1%.

Dr Sarah Hughes, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, said: “The nation’s mental health is deteriorating, and our current system is overwhelmed, underfunded, and unequal to the scale of the challenge.

“After the trauma of the pandemic, the relentless cost-of-living crisis, and persistent racial inequalities, it is no surprise that mental health has suffered, especially for the young.

“But it is unacceptable that services still aren’t meeting people’s needs.”

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of Sane, said: “The most shocking and often overlooked fact is that people with serious mental illness continue to lose 15-20 years of their lives due to underfunded and under-resourced mental health services.

“The majority of people diagnosed with mental ill health either receive no treatment at all or the help they are given is mostly in the community and is patchy and inadequate.

“This report exposes the huge scale of need facing a system that is already in breakdown, particularly involving the services available to young people.”

Elsewhere, there was a rise in the number of people who reported ever having self-harmed, as well as an increase in those who experienced suicidal thoughts or attempted suicide in the 12 months leading up to the survey.