‘I was at breaking point’: Carer highlights NHS failings after nursing dying ex-husband
Diane Edwards is exhausted and in mourning. She has agreed to speak to Sky News just 10 days after her ex-husband’s death.
She stands in the bathroom where they would spend hours through the night together as he battled stage 4 terminal bowel cancer.
“Sometimes I’d put him back into bed and the blood would be pouring out,” she says.
“It’s horrific. It isn’t the same person you knew or you were married to. They’re not the same people.”
Mick was blind and needed assistance moving around his home. He had been suffering for months and opportunities to diagnose his condition were missed.
After he was told he had cancer, carers and charity support staff would visit to help the family during the day but Diane says they were insufficient and lacked the medical training needed.
“They weren’t medical carers. He deteriorated even more and I was on my knees, I was at breaking point.
“The tears were rolling down my cheek, sometimes I didn’t know I was crying. I was worn out and I thought ‘if I don’t do something about myself, I’m going to end up in hospital’. I never slept. Your body gets used to no sleep.”
Mick Edwards
One year ago, complications in Mick’s condition meant he required hospital treatment.
This time he was discharged with a fast-track care package known as NHS Continuing Healthcare or CHC. It’s funded by the NHS for people assessed as having health and social care needs caused by a medical issue.
Around 12 weeks after leaving hospital, Mick was remotely assessed online by NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, which found he needed social care instead of palliative care.
Diane says Mick didn’t have any family present at this meeting, only staff from a care home who were now looking after him.
It left the family worried they would have to sell his home to pay for the palliative care they believed he needed.
“Mick couldn’t cope with a video link,” Diane says. “He’d lost his confidence, he’d had falls, he was deteriorating, so he couldn’t have coped.
“I had to tell Mick he’d lost his funding. He got upset over it. He didn’t eat for a day because of it. It’s hard, there’s nothing out there for you for help, there’s no backup, I wish there was.”
Diane and Mick Edwards on their wedding day
The Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin NHS Trust offered its sympathies and condolences to Mick’s family, telling Sky News its assessments are carried out in line with the national framework, which allows providers to use a number of approaches including face-to-face or video-teleconferencing.
The assessment teams recommend whether patients have an unmet health need over and above what a local authority can provide. Every individual has the right to appeal, the trust says.
The national framework also says it is best practice for assessors to meet with the individual being assessed and that there are concerns such CHC assessments can be a postcode lottery.
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Research by the Nuffield Trust thinktank found that nationally between January and March of this year, only around a fifth of people who underwent a CHC assessment were eligible and that approvals varied widely, from over 40% in Leicestershire to just 7.3% in Gloucestershire.
Nuffield Trust fellow Rachel Hutchings and her team acknowledge there is little public understanding around the CHC process and that there can be many complex reasons contributing to the disparities, such as the demographics of the population served by the respective trusts.
But she says the inconsistencies in how funding is allocated and assessed are a concern.
She told Sky News: “There are a lot of pressures within the social care system more generally, we know that long-term reform is definitely needed, but so far we’ve had very little progress on that, but in the short-term there’s a real urgent crisis facing social care as well and we see a lot of these challenges kind of exemplified within CHC.”
Rachel Hutchings from Nuffield Trust
NHS England told Sky News that “anyone eligible for continuing healthcare should receive a package of support that is tailored to their individual needs and preferences”.
It continued: “The process of assessment for continuing healthcare and decision-making should also be centred around the individual, taking into account their needs, or their representative’s view where appropriate, and they should be empowered and assisted to participate.”
Mick’s CHC funding was eventually reinstated six weeks later after a social worker and a local GP intervened.
But Diane says she believes her ex-husband’s final days are indicative of how patients nearing the end of life are treated and that Mick would have opted for assisted dying had it been available.
The dates for Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK have been announced, with the US president due to be welcomed by the King from 17 to 19 September.
Buckingham Palace also confirmed that President Trump and first lady Melania will be hosted by the King and Queen at Windsor Castle.
It was expected that the three-day state visit would take place in September after Mr Trump let slip earlier in April that he believed that was when his second “fest” was being planned for.
Windsor was also anticipated to be the location after the US president told reporters in the Oval Office that the letter from the King said Windsor would be the setting. Refurbishment works at Buckingham Palace also meant that Windsor was used last week for French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit.
This will be Mr Trump’s second state visit to the UK, an unprecedented gesture towards an American leader, having previously been invited to Buckingham Palace in 2019.
Donald Trump and Melania Trump posing with Charles and Camilla in 2019. Pic: Reuters
He has also been to Windsor Castle before, in 2018, but despite the considerable military pageantry of the day, and some confusion around inspecting the guard, it was simply for tea with Queen Elizabeth II.
Further details of what will happen during the three-day visit in September will be announced in due course.
On Friday, Sky News revealed it is now unlikely that the US president will address parliament, usually an honour given to visiting heads of state as part of their visit. Some MPs had raised significant concerns about him being given the privilege.
But the House of Commons will not be sitting at the time of Mr Trump’s visit as it will rise for party conference season on the 16 September, meaning the president will not be able to speak in parliament as President Macron did during his state visit this week. However, the House of Lords will be sitting.
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Labour MP: ‘Trump isn’t welcome here’
In February this year, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer presented the US president with the letter from the King inviting him to visit during a meeting at the White House.
After reading it, Mr Trump said it was a “great, great honour”, adding “and that says at Windsor – that’s really something”.
In February, Sir Keir Starmer revealed a letter from the King inviting Donald Trump to the UK. Pic: Reuters
In the letter, the King suggested they might meet at Balmoral or Dumfries House in Scotland first before the much grander state visit. However, it is understood that, although all options were explored, complexities in both the King and Mr Trump’s diaries meant it wasn’t possible.
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This week, it emerged that Police Scotland are planning for a summer visit from the US president, which is likely to see him visit one or both of his golf clubs in Aberdeenshire and Ayrshire, and require substantial policing resources and probably units to be called in from elsewhere in the UK.
Precedent for second-term US presidents, who have already made a state visit, is usually tea or lunch with the monarch at Windsor Castle, as was the case for George W Bush and Barack Obama.
A small plane has crashed at Southend Airport in Essex.
Essex Police said it was at the scene of a “serious incident”.
Images posted online showed huge flames and a large cloud of black smoke, with one witness saying they saw a “fireball”.
A police statement said: “We were alerted shortly before 4pm to reports of a collision involving one 12-metre plane.
“We are working with all emergency services at the scene now and that work will be ongoing for several hours.
“We would please ask the public to avoid this area where possible while this work continues.”
A huge fireball near the airport. Pic: Ben G
It has been reported that the plane involved in the incident is a Beech B200 Super King Air.
According to flight-tracking service Flightradar, it took off at 3.48pm and was bound for Lelystad, a city in the Netherlands.
One man, who was at Southend Airport with his family around the time of the incident, said the aircraft “crashed headfirst into the ground”.
John Johnson said: “About three or four seconds after taking off, it started to bank heavily to its left, and then within a few seconds of that happening, it more or less inverted and crashed.
“There was a big fireball. Obviously, everybody was in shock in terms of witnessing it. All the kids saw it and the families saw it.”
Mr Johnson added that he phoned 999 to report the crash.
Southend Airport said the incident involved “a general aviation aircraft”.
Four flights scheduled to take off from Southend this afternoon were cancelled, according to its website.
Flightradar data shows two planes that had been due to land at Southend were diverted to nearby airports London Gatwick and London Stansted.
Plumes of black smoke. Pic: UKNIP
Essex County Fire and Rescue Service said four crews, along with off-road vehicles, have attended the scene.
Four ambulances and four hazardous area response team vehicles are also at the airport, as well as an air ambulance, the East of England Ambulance Service said.
Its statement described the incident as “still developing”.
Fire engines at the airport
David Burton-Sampson, the MP for Southend West and Leigh, posted on social media: “I am aware of an incident at Southend Airport. Please keep away and allow the emergency services to do their work.
“My thoughts are with everyone involved.”
Local councillor Matt Dent said on X: “At present all I know is that a small plane has crashed at the airport. My thoughts are with all those involved, and with the emergency services currently responding to the incident.”
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UK
Heidi Alexander says ‘fairness’ will be government’s ‘guiding principle’ when it comes to taxes at next budget
Another hint that tax rises are coming in this autumn’s budget has been given by a senior minister.
Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was asked if Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of the cabinet had discussed hiking taxes in the wake of the government’s failed welfare reforms, which were shot down by their own MPs.
Trevor Phillips asked specifically if tax rises were discussed among the cabinet last week – including on an away day on Friday.
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Tax increases were not discussed “directly”, Ms Alexander said, but ministers were “cognisant” of the challenges facing them.
Asked what this means, Ms Alexander added: “I think your viewers would be surprised if we didn’t recognise that at the budget, the chancellor will need to look at the OBR forecast that is given to her and will make decisions in line with the fiscal rules that she has set out.
“We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.”
Ms Alexander said she wouldn’t comment directly on taxes and the budget at this point, adding: “So, the chancellor will set her budget. I’m not going to sit in a TV studio today and speculate on what the contents of that budget might be.
“When it comes to taxation, fairness is going to be our guiding principle.”
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Afterwards, shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Phillips: “That sounds to me like a barely disguised reference to tax rises coming in the autumn.”
He then went on to repeat the Conservative attack lines that Labour are “crashing the economy”.
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Chris Philp also criticsed the government’s migration deal with France
Mr Philp then attacked the prime minister as “weak” for being unable to get his welfare reforms through the Commons.
Discussions about potential tax rises have come to the fore after the government had to gut its welfare reforms.
Sir Keir had wanted to change Personal Independence Payments (PIP), but a large Labour rebellion forced him to axe the changes.
With the savings from these proposed changes – around £5bn – already worked into the government’s sums, they will now need to find the money somewhere else.
The general belief is that this will take the form of tax rises, rather than spending cuts, with more money needed for military spending commitments, as well as other areas of priority for the government, such as the NHS.
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