There is a point I haven't seen made on social care. The argument made by @Jeremy_Hunt and others was that you needed to make DfH a department of health and social care, to get it taken seriously. But the pandemic seems to show that when the chips are down, it always loses out.
The reason for the decanting of patients was because they were (legitimately) terrified of hospitals/the wider NHS falling over, and desperate to free up space. But that's sort of symbolic of our wider priorities on health, going back decades.
You can also see it re social care funding - a thorny problem that's just sort of sat there, with lots of solutions proposed (including by us!) but never quite reaching the top of the pile. Whereas NHS itself gets pretty much all the spare cash going, whoever's PM
We definitely need better integration between the NHS and the elderly care sector, and have for ages. But is there an institutional way to ensure that social care actually gets enough attention in Westminster/Whitehall?
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