A GROUP of county councillors says there must be better joint working between health and social services to stop bed-blocking in hospitals.

Social workers' inflexible hours do not fit the need for health care all day and every day, they say.

They have given the council's cabinet member for adult care, Hugh Carey, until July to deliver evidence of progress.

Two weeks ago the Free Press reported that there were 40 patients in Wycombe Hospital taking up beds needed by others when they could have been discharged.

One of the reasons is the inflexible working hours of some social workers who are not available after 4.30pm to make arrangements for older people to go home. As a result they may have to be admitted to a hospital bed unnecessarily.

Buckinghamshire County Council's partnership select committee learned of the problem when members visited Wycombe Hospital as part of their investigations into the relationship between health and social services.

Their report will go to the council's cabinet on Monday, but select committee chairman Trevor Fowler told the Free Press that one of the problems with such reports was getting the cabinet to give them a high profile.

That was why Cllr Carey had been asked to talk to the committee about it in advance.

Cllr Fowler said: "What we would particularly like to see is health and social services getting tuned in to one another's problems. Both have an interest in the patients, but they seem to want to deal with it without acknowledging the problems the others face.

"We are saying come back to us and tell us what you are doing to put things right."

Health was a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service and there had to be a way of making social workers' hours fit what health needed, he added.

Cllr Fowler said some people went to hospital just for tests called for by their GP. "But very often these tests can't be completed within the time that social workers work and the people are admitted.

"It can sometimes be two or three days to get them released.

"This is crazy and it builds up into a much longer stay in hospital than is really needed."

Health chiefs have also said there should be closer working between health and social services to help prevent bed-blocking.