People across Lincolnshire, including residents in and around Spalding, faced significantly longer waits for occupational therapy or care assessments between April and June 2026, with the number waiting beyond the county council’s target timeframe 67 per cent higher than expected.
The assessments are carried out by Lincolnshire County Council health professionals for adults with physical or mental illness. They help determine whether someone needs additional support, making delays important for people whose care needs may be changing.
Why the waiting list has grown
Lincolnshire County Council officials blamed staff shortages and the difficulty of recruiting experienced social workers. Martin Samuels, the council’s executive director of adult care and community wellbeing, told an overview and scrutiny management board meeting that the waiting list included “lower risk individuals”.
He said people who had already been assessed by the council were generally at lower risk than those waiting for an assessment for the first time. He also said reviews often “lead to no action of any kind”.
Mr Samuels said the shortage of experienced carers had limited the council’s resources to carry out regular assessments for everyone on the waiting list. He also pointed to a wider national recruitment problem affecting qualified social workers, particularly level two workers with experience.
“There’s a national shortage of qualified social workers. Social workers are really difficult to recruit.”
He said Lincolnshire had found it difficult for “some considerable length of time” to recruit experienced level two social workers, adding that there were multiple reasons for the problem but that the national shortage was part of it.
Safeguarding concerns raised
The delays prompted concerns from Coun Martin Hill about the safety of people waiting for an assessment. He raised the possibility that someone being mistreated by a carer might be reluctant to report it directly to that person.
“If somebody is being abused by their carer, the one person they daren’t say anything to is the person.”
Coun Hill made clear he was not alleging that this was happening in Lincolnshire. His concern was whether safeguarding arrangements were being upheld while people waited, referring to known cases in which care had not been properly provided.
Mr Samuels responded that he was “absolutely confident” the council had a “robust” safeguarding process to deal with such issues. The meeting did not report a new assessment timetable or a specific date by which the backlog would be cleared.
For Spalding residents who rely on council adult-care services, the figures relate to Lincolnshire as a whole rather than a separate town-level waiting-time measure. The council’s explanation was given at an overview and scrutiny management board meeting, where staffing capacity, assessment delays and safeguarding assurance were examined.