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All-party report on care for the elderly
A new all-party report on caring for the elderly concludes that a sea-change in terms of who we think of as 'old' is needed before elder care receives the attention and funding it deserves. George Jones takes a look at the report
There’s acres of media attention devoted to climate change. Billions of pounds spent on cutting hospital waiting lists. But care of the elderly - something which affects every family just as much - remains the Cinderella of public services.
An influential group of MPs and peers has concluded that the only way that government and society will face up to the growing challenges of an ageing population is to change public perceptions about ageing.
A report from the All Party Parliamentary Local Government Group published on July 22 highlights how the elderly tended to be thought of as a “problem” - with local councils increasingly being forced to cutback services because of a cash squeeze imposed by Whitehall.
The report, Never Too Late For Living, calls on Government to lead the way in shifting the thinking that says older people are somehow “other”. Mervyn Eastman from Better Government for Older People put it like this:
“The challenge is that we frequently - including older people themselves - think that older people are somebody else. In a sense, it is all about how do we capture and articulate the fact that older people are like anybody else, simply older.”
According to Amelia Cookson, from the Local Government Information Unit, which supported the parliamentary inquiry, the challenge is to create a collective sense of “ownership” around care of the elderly.
She said people saw climate change as an important issue - and were prepared to take action personally through recycling - to help save the planet. But care of the elderly was seen as someone else’s problem.
Clive Betts, Labour MP for Sheffield Attercliffe, the group’s chairman, said care of the elderly did not register as high up public perceptions as NHS waiting lists or hospital closures.
The report calls for a national debate on quality of life in later years.“The lives of older people need to be thought of as ‘our lives’ not ‘their problem’.
“Central government should lead this change nationally by tackling the current crisis, which is impeding progress. Local government should lead locally, by providing services which bring people together, particularly across generations.”
The report also recommends that local authorities make sure there is a simple way for anyone to find out about and access services for the elderly - whether available privately, from public services or from voluntary and community organisations.
Less money should be spent on costly hospital stays and treatment and more on preventative services, like exercise classes that improve balance and prevent faults.
It should be easier for older people to move home to free up equity, to be closer to grown up children or live somewhere more accessible. And it should be easier for people stay in their own homes by adapting them and using Telecare and other assistive technologies.
But the report warned that budget increases for social care had failed to keep pace with either demand or expectations - and it had missed out on the billions of extra funding for the NHS as a whole.
The Comprehensive Spending Review in October 2007 offered real terms spending increases of 4 per cent a year to the NHS reaching £110 billion by 2010/11. By contrast local authorities will receive only a 1 per cent increase per annum to provide adult social care.
A recent report by Sir Derek Wanless suggested that care costs would increase from £10 billion in 2002 to £24 billion by 2026. Other studies have suggested the figure could be as high as £31 billion - staggering sums at a time when public spending is being squeezed as a result of the economic downturn.
Already local authorities are cutting back. Some are raising Meals-on-Wheels charges, while others are introducing more stringent means-testing for social care.
But demand for care is increasing faster than current resources can keep pace. There are now the “older old” - a big increase in the number of people over 100, most of whom will have dementia.
The report’s authors suggest that the baby-boomer generation will not put up with the level of care received by their parents. But the blunt message of this report is they are going to have to make a lot more fuss if politicians and Ministers are to take notice and provide the big increase in funding needed for the services they expecting in their old age.
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