Patients facing 16-year wait for autism tests as MPs say waiting times must fall
A woman awaiting an autism assessment was given a waiting time of at least 16 years, MPs were told, as they said extra money for the NHS must lead to improvements in care and waiting times.
There were also calls from the Labour benches to ensure the Casey Commission into social care did not fundamentally delay a permanent solution for care as the Commons debated health spending on Wednesday.
The Department for Health and Social Care got a £25.6 billion increase in funding in last year's autumn budget, Labour's first since it came into Government.
This takes the overall budget to £201.9 billion according to a House of Commons report.
Chairwoman of the Health and Social Care select committee Layla Moran said the public will be unhappy if the long-awaited funding increase did not lead to better standards, and quicker waiting times.
The Liberal Democrat MP said a 34-year-old constituent was told she could have to wait until her 50s to be assessed for autism.
The Oxford West and Abingdon MP said: 'Now the Government has announced an incredibly welcome £22.6 billion increase in the Health and Social Care day-to-day spend, and that's in addition to the further £3 billion in capital expenditure.
'And it sounds like, and it is, a huge amount of money, and if it's not spent wisely the only thing that will be bigger than the uplift itself is the disappointment of our constituents if it doesn't lead to the change that they so desperately want and need.
'A constituent of mine was referred to her GP for an NHS-funded assessment for autism spectrum disorder. She took tests which all exceeded the threshold, and then she was told that she had to be on a waiting list with an expected wait of 16 to 18 years. Yes, years.
'She's now 34 with young children and waiting for an appointment until she's 51. It's clearly ridiculous.'
Health and Social Care committee member Gregory Stafford agreed on the need for the funding to be matched by improvements.
The Conservative MP for Farnham and Bordon said: 'The Government is pouring billions into the NHS, but without demanding productivity reforms the money is being absorbed by the system instead of reaching the frontline where it is needed the most.'
The Estimates Day debate heard concerns about health coverage being adequate to match growing housing need and a shortage of dental provision.
Labour MP Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) raised fears that the independent commission on adult social care reform, led by Baroness Louise Casey, will mean a long-term solution for the issue would be further delayed.
He said a national care service should be formed, and bring together medical, nursing, personal and social care – with free domiciliary and residential care provided to those who are already self-funding.
Mr Duncan-Jordan said: 'There is widespread acceptance that our current social care system is neither sustainable nor fit for purpose.
'For far too long it's been the Cinderella service of the welfare state, overlooked and underfunded and suffering from a number of inherent problems that started to emerge decades ago but which have now become critical as a result of severe cuts to funding and increasing demand.'
He added: 'I'm afraid the new Casey Commission will only delay that debate further in my view.
'Now we have known about the problems for a very long time. Over the last two decades we have had at least 20 commissions, inquiries and reports analysing what is wrong with the system and what might be done to address the problems.
'However successive governments have found the issue too difficult to tackle and have instead favoured short-term answers which have largely left the system untouched.'
Labour MP Clive Betts said at home chemotherapy should be offered on the NHS as he argued it is 'cheaper and it benefits the patients'.
In the Commons, Mr Betts, who is currently being treated for myeloma, said arranging sessions for chemotherapy can be difficult particularly for those travelling 'many, many miles' for appointments at specialist hospitals.
The Sheffield South East MP said one of his consultants has 'developed an idea for at home chemotherapy, it works, it's good'.
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39 minutes ago
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Woman who wanted family home for therapy dogs loses inheritance battle
A former NHS worker has lost her inheritance battle over her late mother's £420,000 home. Sharon Duggan, 49, told her sisters Brenda, 55, and Ann, 60, that they couldn't have their thirds of the house in Southgate, Crawley, because she needed it for her and her emotional support dogs. But a judge has now ruled 'hyper-vigilant' Sharon can move into a flat instead, and the house must be shared equally among the sisters as laid out in their mother Agnes's will. Agnes Duggan died in August 2018, aged 78, and left her house to be split equally between her three daughters – Ann, the oldest sister, Sharon, a former NHS medical secretary, and Brenda, an alternative therapist. But Sharon – who told a judge she 'is dyslexic and suffers from a variety of health issues, including chronic fatigue syndrome, migraine, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety, insomnia, PTSD, and Adjustment Disorder (and) also has long Covid' – claimed the house for herself and her rescue dogs, saying she was too sensitive for life in a flat. Sharon sued her two sisters under the 1975 Inheritance Act, claiming her medical ailments and sensitivity to noise meant she should get at least a life interest in the property. Although Ann remained neutral in the dispute, Brenda fought the case and has now won, after Judge Alan Johns KC threw out Sharon's claim at Central London county court. The court heard that most of Agnes's estate was tied up in her house, where Sharon had lived and cared for her during her final dementia-stricken years. But after Agnes died, Sharon insisted her needs outweighed her sisters' right to their inheritance, arguing that it would be difficult to find alternative accommodation for her and her two therapy dogs, which 'help with her mental and emotional well-being'. Sharon said she 'sacrificed' her career to move in and care for Agnes in 2014, before arguing their mother was planning to change her will to leave the house to her. She also claimed to have spent £30,000 funding Agnes's vet bills for her dog, Lady, and that she 'psychologically could not cope with living in a flat again'. Her written arguments to the court said 'she is anxious that neighbours may cause disturbances and impact upon her ability to sleep. She now has two rescue dogs, which help with her mental and emotional well-being, but which make finding suitable alternative accommodation difficult. 'The claimant maintains that moving from the property would affect her mental health greatly and that having to move into rented or temporary accommodation would further affect her health negatively.' She told the court: 'I have two dogs to consider and I am hyper-vigilant and sound-sensitive. 'A flat would not be suitable due to the noise levels. I would be better off living in a car, I couldn't cope with it.' Sharon wanted either the house to be transferred to her outright, the right to a life interest, or an order allowing her to buy her mother's old property for a small sum to be raised with a mortgage. But Brenda, who formerly ran a bioresonance therapy company and a business providing gluten-free altar bread to food-intolerant Catholics, defended the claim, insisting Sharon and her pets could move into a flat. Ruling against Sharon, Judge Johns said: 'It's my judgment that there has been no failure to make reasonable financial provision for her. 'I am not satisfied there was any promise that the property would be Sharon's – and certainly not a promise that Sharon was confident would be carried out.' He said she had lived with Agnes rent-free and, although she had spent time caring for her mum while in declining health, the court's role wasn't simply to 'reward meritorious conduct'. 'Given the circumstances in which Sharon occupied the property with Agnes, there's no moral claim strong enough to deprive her sisters of their share of this modest estate,' he said. 'I don't rule out flats as suitable accommodation,' he added, also noting that Sharon should be able to work once the court case is behind her. He also rejected her claim that Brenda was estranged from their mum towards the end of her life. 'Brenda told me that she tried to see her mother and call her, but that that wasn't permitted by Sharon,' he said. 'That evidence included that her telephone calls were blocked and I accept all that evidence.' 'This is a modest estate and Agnes had two other daughters to think of,' he said, adding that the money Sharon claimed to have spent on Lady's vet bills was an overestimate. 'Essentially, provision was made for Sharon by giving her one-third of the estate.' The decision means the three sisters are each due a third of their mother's estate, although Sharon's share could be wiped out by the court bills for the trial. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
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39 minutes ago
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‘These are not numbers – they are people': what ex-communist Slovenia can teach the world about child poverty
Much of the world doesn't have a clue what to do about child poverty, or even when to do it. In the UK the Labour government recently delayed its flagship policy on tackling the issue until the autumn. But if you're looking for inspiration, it might be worth asking what Slovenia has been getting right. The country has the lowest rates of child poverty in Europe. Why? The glaringly obvious reason is that Slovenia is a very economically equal country. 'The heritage of the social state, from communist times, is still here,' says Marta Gregorčič, a professor at the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development, which addresses household distress and poverty. However, this is more than a broad-spectrum equality story. There is a deep, stated commitment to eradicating child poverty in Slovenia, and you can read that in various and sometimes counterintuitive ways. There is a national action plan for children across all kinds of metrics: affordable early years care; educational inclusivity, particularly for Roma children; protective measures on mental health; access to housing – which is transparent and prioritised. The country has 'very strong humanitarian and civil organisations,' says Gregorčič, but Slovenians also take as given that it is everyone's job to make sure kids don't get siloed by social class. And then, seeing one of those organisations up close, one driver of the country's success surfaces constantly: they are never satisfied; one child in poverty is too many. The numbers speak for themselves – the amount of children at risk of deprivation in Slovenia is 10.3%, just under half the EU average of 24.4%, according to Eurostat. The UK is no longer included in these figures, but for comparison, a separate Unicef study found that the UK was third from bottom of the OECD in 2021, and that only Turkish and Colombian children were more likely to be living below the poverty line. Slovenia, in that study? Still first. I'm here to visit Zveza Anita Ogulin & ZPM (ZPM for short), a children's charity in the east of Ljubljana, in a set of low-rise municipal buildings on a tidy, grass-banked street whose name translates as Proletarian Road. Doris Rojo, its head of communications, is annoyed that it gets these buildings rent-free from the state, but has to pay rent on the larger site opposite, which houses a community centre and food bank. Rojo refers frequently to the 'socialism that is left from the past', to explain many features of a Slovenian childhood: the custom of cooked meals at school that lots of children don't pay for, for instance, or the idea that kids have a right to a holiday, by the sea or in the mountains, and no one would think of organising a group trip that didn't include a cross-section of social classes. 'This was considered part of life,' Rojo says. 'Everyone went on holiday, at least once a year. The state even owned apartments by the sea, available for workers on reduced terms.' Somehow, capitalism never attained the status of inevitability or modernity in Slovenian policy discourse – just a different way of doing things, that is only sometimes better. When they call a street after the proletariat, they don't mean that in a bad way. 'Social protection policy in Slovenia has always quite strongly supported families and children,' Gregorčič says, noting that female workforce participation has a long history, going back to the second world war. 'All these policies for women in the labour market, all the subsidies for parental leave, I believe contribute to a lower risk of poverty.' She goes on to list these assistances and allowances: 'maternity and paternity leave at 100% pay; the right to reduced working hours; a childbirth grant; breastfeeding breaks; allowances for large families; allowances for childcare if you have children with disabilities; quite a significant child allowance – €115 a month for the first child in low income households'. Policy, history and social cohesion interact in subtle ways. Female workforce participation has also created a tradition of grandparental childcare, but family help is only part of the picture. Peter Wostner, a policy expert at the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development, describes this geographically. 'We're a very small country, which internally is very diverse. To give you a flavour – there are 33 or 34 regions within Slovenia by which people principally identify themselves – a similar number of different dialects, different cuisines, different everything. Why am I mentioning that? Because of that element of community, the networks within these areas are strong.' Perhaps more generous attitudes created the conditions for a solid social safety net, or perhaps the security creates more generosity, or more likely they're in a feedback loop. Covid triggered a scramble for emergency support common to many European nations, but its aftermath brought on a deeper consideration of the struggles many working families faced here. In 2021, a new child welfare advisory group was formed made up of NGOs, the local Unicef branch and the government-funded Social Protection Institute. Among other things, it consulted 37 children aged 12 to 15 from all over Slovenia, who made proposals on a draft child guarantee action plan. It had fast, concrete results – 13,000 of the most deprived children were guaranteed computer access by 2024 – and the overall finding was that they needed a 'social protection system for the entire family, not only for the child in need within the family. After all, a child is part of a family and shares the same fate as its other members.' Maybe that sounds obvious, that you can't get serious about children's dignity and life chances if you're not also serious about their parents' wages and rents. Economists like Gregorčič will acknowledge the 'strong social protections for families', but she immediately moves on to stubborn pockets of deprivation: 'the migrants, Roma, the homeless, the erased'. (When Slovenia declared independence in 1991, 25,000 people were removed from the registry of permanent residents, thereby losing social and civil rights, and disappearing from the statistics). 'There were 5,000 children among them, and now they are grown up,' Gregorčič continues, 'but it is still a huge problem, the marginalised groups who are missing from the statistics.' The assembled team at ZPM – Rojo, plus Tea Dorić, a social worker, Julija Mišič, the communications lead, and Živa Logar, programme coordinator – also give short shrift to the child-poverty rankings, because the numbers are going in the wrong direction. 'We still have 41,000 children living under the poverty line,' Rojo says, 'and these are not just numbers, they are people.' Slovenia's population is small – two million; if that were scaled up to a UK-sized population, it would equate to 1.5 million kids. In fact, in the UK there are 4.5 million children living in poverty, almost a third. It's almost as if our runaway numbers have washed away our seriousness of purpose. Dorić is technically not a social worker but a social pedagogue – a more holistic form of careworker, concerned with equality and relationships as much as material needs. A lot of European countries practise social pedagogy (Poland, Hungary, Spain, Germany), which if you describe it conceptually sounds kind of: 'Meh, don't we all do that?' You need examples to really get it. Yvalia Febrer, an associate professor of social work at Kingston University, offered this: 'In the UK, you'll get a social worker who will say, 'I'm little Jonny's social worker, I'm not your social worker, even though you're his mum. I'm not interested in your housing issues … I'm just looking at his needs, and whether they're being met. If you're not able to meet them, then that's neglect.' A social pedagogue will say: 'If the problem is housing, let's fix the housing.'' Dorić is the first social pedagogue I've met in real life, and she is everything about that model you would dream of: fierce, imaginative, indefatigable, humane. 'We are trying to say to the wider public, children are not inherently bad. They're amazing, they're so loving and smart, they are doing regular things.' Mišič chimes in: 'Society is bad, not the children. Our parents can't pay the bills, they can't buy food, they can't go on holiday, they are alone.' ZPM started as a charity providing holidays, nearly 70 years ago, but it has expanded its mission to provide a range of services – extra tuition, financial support, therapy, youth groups, food parcels (particularly during Covid) and financial advice. 'It's hard to tell someone how to better manage their finances if you know that they don't have enough. Families will spend a long time walking the line of just about meeting their family's needs, and then one crisis, and the debt keeps on growing. It snowballs,' Mišič says. That collective memory of a socialist past cuts two ways. 'There is a perception that people who are employed cannot be poor. People find it hard to imagine even when it's happening to them,' Mišič continues. Rojo says the stats are lagging the reality: 'But what we are facing really, is that the children we're working with, who are now in poor families, are mainly those where one or both parents work.' Across the road from ZPM, at the youth and community centre, Nuša Lesar, a well-known TV presenter, is running a workshop for teenagers; behind that, there's a food bank, crates of identical flour and supplies, plainly corporately donated; in a third room, I met Vedran Jovanovski, 14, and Tamara Grozden Mirosavlejevič, 11. Vedran is a migrant from North Macedonia; his father is a barber, his mother was a social worker but has to retrain to work in Slovenia. They moved two and a half years ago. His English is excellent, as is his Slovenian. 'For older people, like my mum, it's more difficult. But it's not that hard.' He wants to be an engineer or an architect, and already dresses like one – natty skinny trousers and a blazer. 'We had our own house in Macedonia; my dad had his own barber shop. We had everything, but the situation there is not good,' he says. (The country is politically turbulent and riven with corruption.) 'We didn't come here with friends – we just decided on our own to move and got here, didn't know anything. But we kind of fitted in with people, and with society.' Tamara is quieter. Her mother is a doctor, her father died a few years ago. She loves to dance and teaches younger children traditional Slovenian moves, but both of them come to the children's centre for extra tutoring. She doesn't want to be a doctor because she can't stand the sight of blood, but that's as far as she's got on the career planning, which is fair enough. She's only 11. A core principle of the children's centre, the holidays, the third sector overall, is that kids shouldn't be excluded from anything because of their income or class, whether that's TV workshops or computers or holidays by the sea. In so many ways, the Slovenian story traces that of western democracies everywhere: welfare states have been contracting since the financial crisis. That might show up immediately as a direct impact – Gregorčič describes 'restrictive measures straight after the financial crash, which stopped child allowances being a human right; they became a social right. At that time, childhood poverty rose a lot.' Or it might show up over time as wage erosion and underfunded public services, and that arc would be familiar across a large number of countries. But where Slovenia differs is in the amount of child deprivation it will tolerate. 'We know they are not hungry at school,' Gregorčič says. 'We have free meals in school. We know they are surviving, to say it really harshly. But I, for example, am not proud.' Child poverty isn't the only area where Slovenia ranks high; it's one of the safest countries in the world; it has the third largest share of forests in Europe. 'Five years ago, we started not even comparing ourselves to the EU average [for social health indicators],' Wostner says. 'We benchmark ourselves against the innovators. We're not interested in the US model, we're not interested in the Asian model – we're going in the direction of the social innovation leaders, which is the Nordic model.' I met no one who celebrated having the fewest deprived children in Europe; it seems you can't get this right unless your target figure is zero.
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an hour ago
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A-ha star Morten Harket diagnosed with Parkinson's
A-ha frontman Morten Harket has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The news was announced on Wednesday on the Norwegian synth-pop band's official website in an article written by their biographer Jan Omdahl, which also revealed the singer had already undergone brain surgery twice. Harket, 65, said he had "no problem accepting the diagnosis", adding: "With time, I've taken to heart my 94-year-old father's attitude to the way the organism gradually surrenders: 'I use whatever works'." A-Ha are best known for their megahit Take On Me, taken from their 1985 debut album Hunting High and Low, which features Harket's famous falsetto. Omdahl, who penned the A-ha biography The Swing of Things, wrote: "You know him as A-ha's iconic frontman, a divinely gifted singer, reluctant pop star, solo artist, songwriter, eccentric thinker, father of five and a grandfather too, but in recent years Morten Harket has also been a man battling his own body. "This isn't the sort of news anyone wants to deliver to the world, but here it is: Morten has Parkinson's disease." What it is like to live with Parkinson's Managing Parkinson's – with pickleball and boxing 'One day there will be a cure for Parkinson's' He went on to note how the singer's condition had until now remained strictly private, but for a few people in his immediate circle who knew he was ill. Omdahl also wrote about how the "unpredictable consequences" and stress of going public with the illness had led to him holding off making an announcement. "Part of me wanted to reveal it," Harket told him. "Like I said, acknowledging the diagnosis wasn't a problem for me; it's my need for peace and quiet to work that has been stopping me. "I'm trying the best I can to prevent my entire system from going into decline. It's a difficult balancing act between taking the medication and managing its side effects." He noted: "There's so much to weigh up when you're emulating the masterful way the body handles every complex movement, or social matters and invitations, or day-to-day life in general." According to the NHS website, Parkinson's disease is caused by "a loss of nerve cells in part of the brain called the substantia nigra" which leads to "a reduction in a chemical called dopamine in the brain." Dopamine plays a vital role in regulating the movement of the body, and so symptons can include involuntary shaking, slow movement, and stiff and inflexible muscles; as well as depression and anxiety. Omdahl stressed that while Harket will have to live with the disease for the rest of his life, medication and brain surgery at the Mayo Clinic in the US have, he said, "softened the impact of his symptoms". He said the star underwent an advanced neurosurgical procedure - called deep brain stimulation (DBS) - in June last year, in which "electrodes were implanted deep inside the left side of his brain." In December 2024, Harket underwent a similar procedure on the right side of his brain, he added, which was also successful. While he can still drive his car, Harket is less sure about his future as a singer. "The problems with my voice are one of many grounds for uncertainty about my creative future," he said. His biographer described how, on good days, Harket shows "virtually no sign of many of the most familiar physical symptoms of Parkinson's" but still requires a "round-the-clock effort" to balance medication, signals from the electrodes in his brain, sleep, blood sugar and his mindset - to keep the symptoms at bay. "This isn't always successful, and is more like a never-ending rollercoaster ride," added Omdahl. Asked by the writer if he can sing now at all, Harket replied: "I don't really know. I don't feel like singing, and for me that's a sign. "I'm broadminded in terms of what I think works; I don't expect to be able to achieve full technical control. The question is whether I can express myself with my voice. "As things stand now, that's out of the question. But I don't know whether I'll be able to manage it at some point in the future." He added: "I see singing as my responsibility, and at certain moments I think it's absolutely fantastic that I get to do it. "But I've got other passions too, I have other things that are just as big a part of me, that are just as necessary and true." The article highlighted how other stars who have lived with Parkinson's include fellow singer Ozzie Osbourne, actor Michael J Fox and late boxing champion Muhammad Ali. Harket said he was now going to "listen the professionals", urging fans "don't worry about me". "Spend your energy and effort addressing real problems, and know that I am being taken care of." He revealed he has been working on new song lyrics but was "not sure" if he'll be able to finish and release them. "Time will tell if they make it. I really like the idea of just going for it, as a Parkinson's patient and an artist, with something completely outside the box. "It's all up to me, I just have to get this out of the way first." He concluded: "It used to bother me to think about my sickness becoming public knowledge. In the long run it bothers me more to have to protect something that is strictly a private matter by treating it as a secret." Harket, who also enjoyed a solo career and co-hosted the 1996 Eurovision Song Contest in Oslo, was knighted in Norway in 1992 - along with his A-ha bandmates Pål Waaktaar and Magne Furuholmen - for their services to Norwegian music and international success.
