A Blyth paramedic has spoken out about how the need for ambulance service staff to attend more and more cases involving vulnerable adults highlights how the health and social care system in the UK is "overflowing".
Andrew Raisbeck featured on the fifth episode of the BBC's Ambulance documentary, which is this year focussing on the North East Ambulance Service. The episode highlights how he and his colleagues are often called to attend frightening cases where older and more vulnerable people are becoming incapacitated.
In the show, he and colleague Danielle are called to the home of retired furniture restorer John, who was once presented to the Queen. John has lost a degree of mobility and was reliant on his neighbours for care.
At the time of filming, he was almost bedbound - and neighbour Richard called 999 worrying about his health. Andrew and Danielle attended, assessed John's health and took him to hospital for the care he needed. But they also made a safeguarding referral and helped to put in place social care provision to help him when he was to leave hospital.
This is just one of almost 17,000 safeguarding referrals made by North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) staff for vulnerable adults who need more help since April 2020. Andrew reflected on what was becoming a worryingly large part of his job.
He told ChronicleLive : "It's a strange experience watching yourself back on television, especially given the job we do. But the episode showed what is absolutely an average day for a paramedic. We have the calls where we are attending things you'd expect - but we also find ourselves at the primary care-type jobs where you wouldn't necessarily expect a paramedic or ambulance to be.
"That might not be where you'd expect to see us, but it's become a large part of the job. That's not because of a failing on the part of any one person or service, it's a general symptom of the system overflowing. We're getting to a point where that's the thing - when other services can't get to someone and then it becomes urgent, and we get there instead."
Andrew, an ex-soldier who began with NEAS as a 999 and 111 call-handler, added that paramedics were now frequently required to look after vulnerable older people like John. He said: "Often the first thing someone does is fear they might be taken into care, he said. "It's about saying I can look at this for you and set up a review. It's not about taking away anyone's independence.
"It's becoming much more common. It can be alarming how many of these kind of jobs we go to each week or in each run of shifts. The The pandemic hasn't made it any easier, but I think it was a problem before."
He said in his opinion the "overflowing" health and care system "all comes down to funding". On TV, he added: "Social care is a massively underestimated hidden problem in our society. It's very hard seeing someone's past life and then seeing how they are now.
"A good thing is to try to remember that they weren't always someone needing social care. Just because you get old doesn't mean you change as a person.
"We see a lot of elderly, vulnerable people with no or very little support. Without family and friends supporting people we would be in a society that was overwhelmed. We just have to all come together and look after people. They're all patients and they're all in need of help."
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