Responding to a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on the impact of hardship on primary and community healthcare, Patricia Marquis, Executive Director of RCN England, said:
“Every day, nursing staff see the connection between hardship and health. Social deprivation has a devastating impact on people’s physical and mental health and is well understood to be behind rates of increased mortality amongst children. As poverty worsens, so too do pressures on an already under-resourced health and care system.
“Recent years have seen significant cuts in vital public health services, including health visiting, school nursing, and general practice. These cuts, alongside those to free school meals and Sure Start Centres, entrench inequalities, damaging population health. The result is nursing staff needing to help patients access food banks. It is shameful.
“Measures to reduce poverty are not only morally correct but improve health and benefit wider society. The next government must take urgent action to close these shocking inequalities and invest in the nursing workforce that delivers these vital services in communities.”
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Notes to Editors
Joseph Rowntree Foundation report - ‘The impact of hardship on primary schools and primary and community healthcare’
