LANCASHIRE County Council has launched a pioneering new scheme designed to ease demand for hospital beds and help sick pensioners stay at home.

Working with Lancashire's NHS Trusts, the county council has launched a range of new rehabilitation and rapid response services which will be operated by staff from a newly created organisation, PAMS -- Professions Allied to Medicine.

It is hoped the scheme will become so advanced that pensioners will only have to spend a few days in hospital before returning home after surgery.

New schemes include the provision of:

Community-based, short-term, residential rehabilitation services for older people

Time-limited, goal-orientated rehabilitation services based in the home to allow older people to return home after a period in hospital

Rapid-response crisis support to people in their own homes including offering support for their carers.

County Coun Doreen Pollitt, chairman of the social services committee, launched the scheme today, saying: "We have been working closely with the NHS in Lancashire to set up schemes involving PAMS staff.

"The funding and managerial structures are now in place and we shall soon be recruiting staff like physiotherapists, occupational and speech therapists and aides.

"We are hoping to appoint many of these people on a secondment basis from the trusts.

"I am sure the support offered through PAMS schemes will allow more elderly people to remain in their homes within their community, easing pressures on hospital beds and affording more people the opportunity to live independently as they prefer."