Keeping well and attacking social isolation –

Labour’s pledges on health and social care

Everyone has a right to help and support to stay physically and mentally healthy through social care services together with services provided by the NHS – which must be protected from the Tories’ creeping privatization.

Labour locally would safeguard your wellbeing by:

• continuing to find ways to keep a 24-hour A&E unit at Weston Hospital – and until then working with Bristol Royal Infirmary so patients discharged at night can get home safely;
• reducing the need for GP visits and hospital admissions by encouraging the use of tried and tested initiatives – for example, ‘social prescribing’ activities such as walking and gardening that link to social care;
• promoting lifelong health and cutting social isolation by increasing funding for setting up – and providing ongoing support for – projects that bring people together in shared interests and activities;
• working directly with voluntary sector partners to support carers of all ages, to prevent them from becoming isolated and to ensure that they have access to respite services and to educational and social opportunities.