NHS Continuing Care Young People in Wales
A previous Rhydian posting flagged up profound deficiencies in the Welsh Government’s NHS Continuing Care (CHC) guidance for children and young people. This posting has now been developed into a paper that appears in The Rhydian: on-line Journal of Social Welfare Law in Wales (volume 2, 2018).
The paper reviews the background to the current legislative and policy frameworks and how through incremental change local authority social services departments in Wales have become – in effect – a second class ‘substitute’ health service. This is not only an unlawful erosion of the right of all people to NHS funded health care but it also means that social services departments are spending very substantial sums on the healthcare needs of young people, when this should be funded by the NHS.
The paper concludes by calling on the Welsh Government to provide urgent updated and ‘clear’ guidance on this important question. The paper can be accessed by clicking here.