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Every month we ask our digital Voices Connect panel of over 1000 people a quick-fire question on what is happening locally and nationally in the health and social care system.
In April, we asked:
Do you think NHS health care and social care will improve or get worse over the next five years?
We asked this, as a recent British Social Attitude survey on the NHS and Social Care, from the National Centre for Social Research, has found that just over one in six people feel that the NHS and social care services will not improve in the next five years. This is lower than at any other point in the past. Nationally, people are not optimistic about the future of health and social care.
From our digital panel of Kent and Medway residents, we have found that locally there is a more pessimistic view, with one in three people saying they felt NHS health care would get worse, and three in four people fearing that social care won't improve in the next five years.
There are many complex challenges facing health and social care. The former NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard warned that it could take five years to clear the backlog from Covid. Complexity of political parties, local and national economics and NHS drivers all pose real challenges for the NHS in Kent and Medway.
In social care; financial pleasures, the rise in national insurance, operational demand and a national conversation about Local Government Reform that has not yet begun, are all creating significant hurdles to overcome locally.
The NHS 10-year plan highlights three shifts which have been backed by considerable structural changes to the organisation of the NHS in Kent and Medway. But as the 10-year plan acknowledges, our findings suggest that “the growing discontent between the service and the people” shows little sign of improving in the near future.
Can the changes that are being made locally to kick start improvements in health and social care be delivered in a consistent way that it becomes noticeable to the residents of Kent and Medway? Only time will tell.
