Why Ivy can't go home

Every day Ted Ransome has to leave her behind and make his way back to Brighton, their home for more than 50 years.

He has lost a stone in weight in the past few months because of his concerns about his wife.

Mrs Ransome, 91, is fit enough to go home but because the extra support and care she needs from social services to live there is not ready yet, she has to stay where she is.

The care she gets on E2 ward at Brighton General Hospital is excellent but all Mrs Ransome wants to do is go home.

The Ransomes are not unusual. The other 19 patients on the ward are also ready to leave.

More than 100 patients in the 1,142 beds owned by Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust are taken up by patients who have been assessed as "fit for discharge".

But the shortage of affordable nursing and care home places and delays in getting home care packages together means many have to stay weeks before they can leave.

Mr Ransome has been visiting his wife every day for the three months she has been in hospital.

Mrs Ransome was brought in with a bowel condition. She can also sometimes get confused.

The couple's two-storey terraced house needs to be adapted before Mrs Ransome can go home.

A new bed has been installed in the ground floor but other equipment, including a hoist, is still needed.

Arrangements to organise a carer to come in and visit Mrs Ransome twice a day have not been completed.

Mr Ransome, 87, said it was distressing to leave her behind every evening.

He said: "I come in the morning and I stay with her all the time until it is time to go again.

"It is very difficult. Every time I leave she holds on to me and cries and asks me to take her home with me.

"It can be very upsetting. All she wants to do is come home and all I want is for her to be with me.

"The nurses and staff are all very kind and look after her very well but she is not happy."

The couple have been married for 64 years and have not been separated for this long since the Second World War.

Mr Ransome said: "It is lonely without her at home. We want to be together but it seems to be taking such a long time to organise it."

The son of another patient on the ward wants his mother to move to a residential home in the north of England to be closer to him but East Sussex social services says it can't afford to send her there.

While preparations are made to try to secure a place for the pensioner she has to stay put.

Another patient has spent weeks waiting to go into a nursing home in the Brighton area but again has been told she has to wait.

She said: "The people are very nice here and they do the best they can but I would rather be somewhere else.

"I don't feel I should be in a hospital because I can look after myself."

Senior ward manager Mandy Taylor said a lot of patients were on the ward for several weeks at a time.

She said: "We do our best but this is a hospital and not a nursing home.

"We get a lot of help from volunteers who come in to visit the patients and do some shopping for bits and pieces for them.

"But the patients are fit to go and shouldn't really be here."

There is nothing exceptionally different about ward E2 from the dozens of others in hospitals around Sussex.

The nurses are busy throughout the day caring for the needs of their elderly patients while visitors come and go.

But the patients are frustrated because they want to leave and the hospital staff are unhappy because they know the ward is not the best place for them.

Meanwhile, having the patients in the beds has a knock-on effect on an already busy trust which is being forced to cancel operations because there are no beds available.

Peter James, from the Patients Action Group in Sussex, said: "If a person is well enough to leave a hospital then they should be able to leave.

"It has been proven time and time again that a patient's recovery can be put back if they stay in hospital.

"Mentally they are not able to recuperate properly. They are also more vulnerable to infections."

Mr James said Brighton was not the only area with problems.

He said: "Hospitals across the South-East are all facing the same strain.

"It is clear more money needs to be given to social services so they can start dealing with the problem."

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals chief executive Stuart Welling said it was vital the whole health community worked together.

At a recent board meeting he said it was important to look at the number of people who were being referred to hospital unnecessarily as well as tackling nursing and care home shortages.

Work has already started on trying to deal with the problem.

Brighton and Hove City Primary Care Trust is working closely with social services in the city and have drawn up a number of new schemes.

These include a new Intermediate Care scheme, which provides care and support for patients who have just left hospital.

Teams are also working on trying to keep patients out of hospital in the first place and are working with GPs to try to cut down any unnecessary referrals.

The hospital trust has been managing to cope with demand in the past few months but there has been an unexpected surge of emergency cases at Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

Mr Welling said the problem was starting to ease but staff were working at full stretch.

Sue Cleeve, acting chief officer for Brighton, Hove and Lewes Community Health Council, said: "The problems with bed-blocking are something the council has been worried about for some time.

"We have an ongoing project which we are working on to see how we can start getting these beds unblocked.

"We are planning to meet with all the organisations involved to see if we can try to sort something out."

In the meantime, Mr Ransome still sits by his wife's hospital bed and has to leave her behind at the end of every day.