A woman from Cornwall has described being left to crawl up the stairs after a stroke, as new figures expose a chronic shortage of rehabilitation services in the NHS. Jan Anson, 59, collapsed at home in September 2024 and was later discharged from hospital with barely any support, despite struggling with basic tasks such as brushing her teeth.
Ms Anson was taken to North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple before being transferred to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, where she underwent a life-saving thrombolysis procedure. Four days later, she was discharged against the advice of physiotherapists, who warned she was not ready. She was assured she would receive visits from community teams run by the Cornwall Partnership Foundation Trust, but no such visits materialised for two months.
In desperation, her husband John paid for a private speech and language therapist at £175 per session, which the couple could only afford for a few appointments. Ms Anson, a former freelance writer, said she could not speak properly, write legibly, or even eat soup without dribbling. "I had to get up the stairs. I was crawling up the stairs," she told The Independent.
The case highlights a wider crisis. A national audit of stroke services in 2025 found that not a single community team in England had the required staffing levels to give adequate care. At least 1.4 million stroke survivors live in the UK, with 100,000 affected each year. While death rates have fallen 43 per cent since 2001, the NHS community service waiting list has risen to 1.1 million in January 2025.
Professor Deb Lowe, stroke consultant and medical director at the Stroke Association, warned that saving more lives is pointless if patients are then "condemned to a life of disability". She noted that the largest stroke age group is 50 to 59-year-olds and urged Wes Streeting to prioritise rehabilitation. "There is no point in doing some of the hospital care improvements if you are then condemning people to live with a life of disability," she said.
