THE just-published ‘State of Social Care’ report from the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) was greeted as ‘a damning indictment of a social care system that is failing older people’, by Age Concern’s Director General, Gordon Lishman yesterday.
Free social care for the elderly is a thing of the past in England and Wales. Care in the community, where the elderly are looked after at home, has been savaged by council cuts, and is now priced at so much an hour, and in most cases is of a very poor quality, carried out by private agencies, whose sole concern is profit.
The elderly, being the weakest and most defenceless section of society have become a prime target for the political privateers of the Labour government, and the profiteers of the private sector.
The generations that built up Britain after the war, and made big profits for the bosses are just being discarded, treated like scrap, and left to wither away and die, often in the most disgusting circumstances.
Council owned and run old people’s homes have been shut down as a burden on the taxpayer, and their place has been taken by private sector care homes.
These now charge the elderly £600 a week-plus for accommodation and food, meaning that these homes are refuges for the very well-off, or for those people who acquired a home at great expense to themselves, paying off mortgages for many years, and now have to sell their home to be able to afford to stay in a private care home.
Consequently large numbers of the elderly go to their graves with as much to their name as they had when they were born – nothing – despite a life of toil.
In fact, the fate of social care for the elderly, that has now been reduced to private care in the home by private agencies, is a warning as to what will happen to national health if Blair and Brown succeed in replacing hospital care with a primary care network of NHS care in the community. Under this regime, the sick will be ‘serviced’ or ‘monitored’ by the same type of private contractors, eager for profit, that are providing ‘social care’ for the elderly.
Age Concern’s Lishman is quite clear. ‘Those receiving care at home have seen services withdrawn and prices increased, while those in care homes and their families often find themselves subsidising the pitiful amounts local authorities pay for care.
‘Older people are also let down by the quality of care delivered in care homes.
‘It is unacceptable that 61 per cent of care homes don’t meet minimum standards of managing medication safely and 57 per cent don’t ensure there is an appropriate care plan for its older residents.’
Mervyn Kohler, Head of Public Affairs at Help the Aged, remarked: ‘It is particularly alarming that only two thirds of care homes meet minimum standards relating to safe management of medication to residents.
‘There should no excuse for such lapses in provision of basic, yet critical care needs, but sure enough we’re still hearing of it.’
He said the government was ‘reluctant to fund care for the elderly and disabled.’
Those who are no longer able to produce profit for the employers are simply being left to rot at home, or else are being fleeced of their savings and assets by the private sector, in the guise of ultra expensive care homes, before they die.
This is nothing but bourgeois robbery of the elderly.
This mis-treatment of the elderly is taking place at the same time as the banks and the city of London are awash with billions of profits and a glut of million-pound bonuses.
The first task of a workers’ government will be to reintroduce free and first class care at home for the elderly, and completely free health care, accommodation and food for the elderly in nationalised and properly regulated residential care homes.
The finances for such a necessary development will come from the nationalisation of the banks and the expropriation of the bosses.
