A new report, Care in Crisis, issued by Age UK spells out exactly what the Tory-led coalition’s destruction of the welfare state means for the elderly and the disabled.
Their research has exposed the fact that of the two million older people in England who need care provision only 800,000 at present receive any support from public or private sector agencies.
This already inadequate funding is set to be reduced even further as the savage spending cuts imposed by the government on local councils begin to really hit home.
Already, only 26 councils out of 148 in England fund people classified as having ‘moderate’ care needs – to put this into perspective ‘moderate’ needs includes those too ill or disabled to prepare meals for themselves or have a bath on their own.
Social care is means-tested with free support only available to those with savings of less than £23,250, but Age UK has revealed that local councils, desperate to achieve the savings demanded by the coalition, are refusing those entitled to care by tightening the eligibility criteria.
All in all, the government is seeking to make cuts in spending on care for the elderly by a minimum of £300 million in four years, which Age UK conservatively estimates will mean that more than one million of the most vulnerable pensioners in England will receive no help or support whatsoever.
Back in April, Age UK warned that elderly people could die as a result of the savage cuts being imposed, while many more would end up in hospital unnecessarily as care was withdrawn. This latest report shows that this is now inevitable as the government seeks to prop up the banks at the expense of the sick and elderly.
It is not just those who rely on care packages delivered by the local councils who are facing a miserable and short existence.
Under successive Tory and Labour governments the drive for privatisation of health care provision for the elderly has resulted in the ending of council run care homes, and a burgeoning private sector in the provision of residential care.
For years companies like Southern Cross, the largest private care home company, made huge profits, but with cash-strapped councils refusing now to pay increased charges, Southern Cross has gone from a £15 million profit last year to a loss of £6.8 million this year, and it faces the imminent prospect of bankruptcy and eviction from the 752 care homes it rents.
What will happen to the elderly residents of these homes is completely up in the air, with councils claiming that they cannot provide for all of them, and the government washing its hands of the whole affair.
What is clear is that under capitalism workers who have passed the age at which they can be exploited for profit are treated as a drain on the resources of the state.
Where possible, capitalism has left them at the mercy of the privateers eager to make a profit from social need.
Now that the profit has dried up and bankruptcy looms, the only future for the old, the sick and the infirm is to be tossed into the streets and left to fend for themselves, or be forced to rely on the support of their families already stretched to breaking point by the crisis.
The defence of the welfare state is a very real life and death question for millions of people today.
The only way it can be defended is through the bringing down of this coalition government with a general strike and its replacement with a workers government that will go forward to socialism.
