Founder of UK’s leading care software provider says our care system needs more than vote winning promises

Nuno Almeida, the founder and CEO of Nourish Care, the leading provider of digital care management software in the UK that supports more than 385,000 people drawing on care, says that the UK care system is unsustainable and is in urgent need of more than vote winning promises.

According to Nuno, not fixing our care system will cost the UK dearly as adult social care must be seen as an investment, not a draw on resources.

“The care system is broken and it is in urgent need of attention because the problem is only going to grow. In the next 10 years, 600,000 more of us in the UK  are going to need care, in fact, most  of us will have to draw on care at some point and as it stands, the system is already struggling. The incoming government is going to face huge infrastructure and budget challenges,” says Nuno.“

As it stands, there are inequalities when it comes to care access, people are being coerced into packages that don’t suit their needs and the shortage of carers will only worsen.”

Nuno explains that the new government will have to tackle the following:

• Inefficiency – acute and primary care is done well in this country but the adult care sector is unsustainable. There are lots of different parts, such as the NHS, GPs, community nurses, etc and they are not joined up. There are 42 integrated care systems in this country, each is a separate entity and there is no consistency across the board.
• Community care challenges – the majority of people don’t want to go into residential care because when that happens, the average lifespan is 17-months. However, community care doesn’t work as it should. The problem is, the Local Authority might say that Eric needs 45 minutes of care, but when the carer gets there, he really needs three hours. There aren’t enough carers to do all the tasks needed.  Carers are underpaid and overworked. We don’t have large numbers of doctors, nurses, but we have larger numbers of care workers, but seem unwilling to train them and empower them to take lower risk clinical tasks. There is a huge untapped potential.
• Building hospitals/buying more bed space won’t help – the vote winning promises won’t fix the system. The social care budget in the UK has gone up hugely but the system is under strain. More people are paying for their own care, but that is pulling resources from the publicly funded system because the same care teams and doctors are looking after them.
• Supporting unpaid carers – unpaid carers are saving the NHS money but they are overlooked, undervalued and under supported. Studies suggest that up to 71% of unpaid carers contemplate suicide.

Nuno’s role in reshaping the care system…

Nuno founded Nourish after working undercover as a volunteer carer for three months in a bid for a deeper understanding of how tech could help improve things. He has led multi-disciplinary research into the flow of people who can draw on care from hospitals into the community. He chaired the vision for social care working group with the APPG for Adult Social Care and is a regular advisor to digital transformation programmes across health and social care in the UK and Europe. He is also a founding board member of the Care Software Providers Association.