We are all, inevitably, going to become old at some point – and that’s only if we’re lucky. Some of us will age well and will still be kicking around in our 70s/ 80s/90s, while some lives will be cut short by illness or accident.
Some of us will be lucky enough to see out our remaining days at home, while others will be fleeced of their lifetime assets, courtesy of privately owned care homes, a surefire way to gobble up savings. That’s as well as bringing in a guaranteed large income for care home owners.
You’ll never see a poor care home chief – mark my words. You will, however, spot a care home owner with a smart car parked up outside.
All while the staff – the stars of the show – are paid a pittance for one of the most important jobs a human being can choose to take on: to care for strangers.
There’s nothing more noble. And yet, following decades of promises by various politicians, we haven’t moved on. Caring will never be monetarily considered in the same room as banking, or being “a celebrity”, despite neither of the latter being able to save lives or serve any other purpose than lining their pockets and seeing to their own needs.
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What does this tell us about our nation’s attitude to older people? Or sick people? Our mums and dads, our grandparents, aunties, uncles etc? And us in the not-too-distant future?
Going into care generally means that the sum of any savings you may have has to be lower than £23,250, otherwise you will have to pay through the nose for that care – probably for the rest of your life.
Care is a skill for which workers are simultaneously paid a pittance, as well as, if they’re employed by an agency, being expected to fund their own petrol in order to travel to their clients’ homes.
This is a big dent in a very small wage for a hugely important service. Imagine loaded lawyers or bankers etc funding the fuel for a work-related journey? No way is the answer to that one.
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What if we didn’t have these poorly paid amazing people? Brilliant care workers are worth their weight in gold, not pennies.
I will never forget when both my parents had early-onset Alzheimer’s, and following my dad’s death from the disease, (my mum had already passed), it was his carer that found him. She had packed up all his belongings for me before I even arrived there. These are people with huge hearts and often empty purses.
And still politicians have, over the years, repeatedly made promises to “fix social care” without fulfilling one of them. This says everything about our attitude to ageing and caring in this disposable world. So, if we don’t want to be treated in a similar way, we’d better demand that the pledges to “fix social care” don’t just remain a promise.
We’d better demand that action replaces the long-held view of sitting on the problem until it goes away. It’s not going to, despite charities urging Boris to sort out the social care mess.
And no one has come up with a plan to make it go away, probably because it involves “older people”. Which, in the end, will be ALL of us.
