New data has shown that over 28,000 people died last year while waiting for a care plan to be put in place.

Research from Age UK showed that, in a 12-month period spanning 2022 and 2023, 28,655 people aged 65 or older died before receiving care.

This, the charity said, equates to an average of 79 deaths a day, 550 a week, and 2,388 a month.

Age UK said in a press release: “In many cases, had these older people got the help they needed their final days would have been more comfortable, and their families would have felt less alone and better supported.

“These numbers are broadly similar to those from the year before, reflecting a social care system in which long waits have become a common experience.”

The charity also added that the blame for these delays rests on the lack of public money to allow local authorities to assess older people speedily, and on there often being insufficient care workers to staff the care services a growing older population urgently needs.

Age UK’s latest polling on social care also confirms how hard it can be to access care and support. Respondents spoke about waiting too long for benefits assessments, care assessments, care packages or reviews, discharge support, and home adaptations – and the toll this took on them and their families in the meantime.

The results from this polling of people aged 50-plus and Age UK’s policy analysis will be set out in a report the charity will be publishing in the coming weeks. The report’s other social care findings include:

• Almost a third (29%) of people were concerned about their ability to access local authority services.
• 19% of people were concerned about their ability to access a home care worker or carer.
• Almost a fifth (19%) of people were concerned about their ability to access Dementia services, such as a Memory Clinic.

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: “Good social care makes a big difference whenever it is needed, but never more so than in the last weeks and months of our lives.

“Kind and committed care professionals provide comfort and reassurance, especially important for older people living on their own, and help lift the load from family members for whom this is often a time when they want to focus one hundred per cent on being a child, partner, or other loved one, without the distraction and worry of carrying out all the care tasks themselves, or of having to wade through red tape to get a formal care service up and running. For these reasons it is really sad when social care arrives too late.

“The numbers of older people dying while waiting for care are also emblematic of the now chronic systemic problems within social care, as hard pressed local authorities try to meet the needs of a growing older population with resources that in no way match up. Social care lacks sufficient funding and, in many places, trained staff, and unless and until we get a government that’s prepared to face up to these problems older people will continue to go to their graves without receiving the social care they are due.

“In our recent polling of the 50-plus population, a big majority, four in five (80%) thought that the government should be doing more to support the NHS and social care services. We hope that the political parties contesting the General Election will listen and respond. Older people who need social care have waited too long.”