shibs
@drshibley.bsky.social
#physician #dementia #delirium #disabled Honorary Visiting Professor, School of Law and Social Justice NHS practitioner health disability specialist Personal views only
A new book about the literary history of silence traces the art of shutting up from the empty halls of “Beowulf” to COVID lockdowns and beyond. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
How Golden Is Silence, Actually?
How golden is silence, actually? The secret history of shutting up.
newyorker.com
Used to work in an office adjoining Trevor when he was a very, very senior figure at LWT ca 1994. He was very grand indeed. Now he speaks for the non liberal metropolitan classes.
David Higham@oldtrotter.bsky.social · 3d agoDear me.
The "neighbourhood health" model is VERY NHS-centric, and is pivoting towards reduced autonomy for GPs. But I don't see how under the current contractual models how there can be a coherent work-up of the infrastructures required for 'living well' with frailty or dementia.
All of what I wrote here in the Guardian in 2017 on frailty and ageing is still totally relevant to the current neighbourhoods N.H.S. policy. www.theguardian.com/social-care-...
Let's fight the stigma around ageing and frailty | Shibley Rahman
Focusing on the physical deficits of old age means we are not paying enough attention to other aspects of health and wellbeing
theguardian.com
From 7 @lbc.co.uk: is it time to call Last Orders on parliament’s drinking culture? Should men stand aside to insure Labour’s next leader is a woman? Harriet Harman says they should! And chancellor John Healey is looking for cuts - but where should his axe fall? 📞0345 6060973 x
The way to combat stigma in dementia is not by promoting the lack of cognitive decline in those people with mild cognitive impairment not dementia. This really can't be overemphasised.
My new blog has the aim of making unpaid carers "visible" again - and of explaining why they deserve to be considered part of the 'neighbourhood' too. Here I talk about 'transitions'. modernservicesframework.wordpress.com/2026/08/01/1...
unpaid carers
Transitions Mum was one of those very rare people who seemed to become disabled overnight. For many, disability has a gradual onset, as a medical impairment encroaches on an ability to live –…
modernservicesframework.wordpress.com
My new blog has the aim of making unpaid carers "visible" again - and of explaining why they deserve to be considered part of the 'neighbourhood' too. Here I talk about 'transitions'. modernservicesframework.wordpress.com/2026/08/01/1...
unpaid carers
Transitions Mum was one of those very rare people who seemed to become disabled overnight. For many, disability has a gradual onset, as a medical impairment encroaches on an ability to live –…
modernservicesframework.wordpress.com
How well do we use data to improve quality in the post-diagnostic experience for people with dementia? modernservicesframework.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/h... via @dr_shibley
How well do we use data to improve quality in the post-diagnostic experience for people with dementia?
Andy Burnham, the current Prime Minister, left a very good impression with his intentions to have a 23rd attempt at reforming adult social care. As Richard Humphries, eminent expert, noted: “…
modernservicesframework.wordpress.com
I launched my new blog on unpaid carers today, coincidentally, while Andy Burnham announced that he wanted to look again at adult social care. Please suggest topics for me to have a look at. I'll happily do them. modernservicesframework.wordpress.com
unpaid carers
msf
modernservicesframework.wordpress.com
Painful memories. www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/lo...
Long waits for a hospital bed in an emergency: will urgent care policies make a difference for patients?
Stories and images of large numbers of people waiting in overcrowded A&E departments are sadly not new. There has been growing concern in recent years, however, about the number of patients who are be...
nuffieldtrust.org.uk
If you are referring to care homes, i agree. I have seen the problems from a professional perspective but also we had to sell my mother's home to pay for her care home. It was a dreadful time altogether, without all the additional stress.
My mother had Alzheimer's, and it lasted a decade. That wilderness she descended into was made far worse by a state that essentially said "good luck" and "goodbye" having to navigate care and selling her house and worrying that we'd run out of money to finance it all. If anyone can fix it, good.
I basically feel that Andy has to be given credit and encouragement for giving it a go. It is a well known political graveyard, but it also is a clear statement of what sort of society we want.
A reflection on Andy’s big speech today on adult social care. substack.com/home/post/p-...
Being close to a vanishing act
A reflection on Andy Burnham's speech today on a need to fund and to reconfigure urgently adult social care.
substack.com
Useful to understand the direction of travel - but lots more to do. "What Andy and Louise said this morning and this afternoon about adult social care reform" www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-a...
What Andy and Louise said this morning and this afternoon about adult social care reform
Please check against original sources. As a former unpaid carer, I was interested to hear Andy Burnham and Louise Casey this morning and, in Louise Casey's case, in a radio phone-in this afternoon.
linkedin.com
Before the major speech by the Prime Minister today on adult social care this morning, the “Blg Conversation” consultation was introduced. Please participate and share with your friends and colleagues. caseycommission.co.uk/bigconversat...
The Big Conversation on Care | The Casey Commission
Help shape a fairer future
caseycommission.co.uk
My blogpost on today's incremental step on the reform of adult social care. www.linkedin.com/pulse/shapin...
Shaping the future of care together - with a new set of people, again
Only as recently as 20th July 2026, the King's Fund asked whether the reform of social care could be "kicked down the road" yet again. We have of course been here before.
linkedin.com
A way to ease the pressure on acute hospital admissions will be to provide a free at the point of use social care service along the lines of universality. This is not all that social care should do. It’s time to end the postcode lottery and abuse of unpaid care labour.
Andy Burnham is one of a very few group of political leaders who has the political capital to attempt a reform of adult social care. In terms of policy, it remains a political graveyard. Here's my new blog. livingwelldementia.wordpress.com/2026/07/28/t...
The ‘National Care Service’ – revisited
I last blogged on the National Care Service in August 6th, 2015. Make parity a reality, between health and social care. I have never understood professionally in the last 30 years or so of my life …
livingwelldementia.wordpress.com
It makes absolute sense for adult social care for older people, say for example with frailty or dementia, to be framed as on an equal footing with the NHS, free at the point of use, as part of the welfare state settlement. It’s time to get on with it.
"Unpaid carers play a vital role in our neighbourhoods and communities, yet too often their contributions go unseen." www.gov.uk/government/p...
Unpaid carers action plan: recognise, refer, reach
gov.uk
Meanwhile back in the real world away from managerial pontificating about neighbourhoods, some people are desperate for some help.
Both Andy Burnham and Ed Davey have referred to unpaid carers. The new flagship policy for the NHS is literally called 'neighbourhoods'. All the apparatchiks in adult social care seem to have cancelled "unpaid carers". Something is, however, afoot for Wednesday.
For all the semantics of the identity of adult social care, as a profession in its own right, and not just there to bail out the N.H.S. (which is obvious), there continues to be a rank wilful blindness of unpaid family carers.
Neighbourhood health and the National Care Service: a new political consensus? modernservicesframework.wordpress.com/2026/07/27/n...
Neighbourhood health and the National Care Service: a new political consensus?
The politics of adult social care is often presented as a story of vast disagreement, presented as vast oceans of ideological difference. One party favours one funding model, another proposes a dif…
modernservicesframework.wordpress.com
