Yet there are large numbers of frail, vulnerable older patients with complex needs who often have no advocate to speak up for them.Society, media values and the attitudes of the voting public, as well as those of some health and social care professionals, are inherently (if unwittingly) ageist. Yet the capacity in the system to deal with these specialist needs is lacking.
Many of the targets trumpeted in the NHS plan are about the ability of articulate younger people to see their GPs at a time of their convenience, or choose and book their operations. In many cases, problems such as falls, immobility, confusion or “failure to cope” at home have medically treatable causes, or would benefit from professionals such as physiotherapists or occupational therapists. Many patients never receive comprehensive specialist assessment. Yet, despite the good intentions expressed in the Government’s National Service Framework for Older People in 2001, we are still a long way off putting their needs at the forefront of service planning. They also provide the bulk of work for general practitioners and for the social care system – with over 500,000 people in long-term care and millions more receiving social services at home. Older people are the core clients of NHS hospitals, accounting for some two-thirds of admissions – with an average age of 67.
Sir: I was pleased to see that you made the care of older people front-page news (27 March). I remember, at the end of England’s 5-1 defeat of Germany in 2001, telling my son it was a moment of history he’d always remember.
More from John Walsh. I have put in the hours watching World Cup tournaments with my children over the last 18 years and weeping at penalty shootouts. I do, however, enjoy being an occasional partisan supporter.
My chronic non-interest in whether individual teams win or lose falls away when England are playing an international match. I listen to the post-match comments of taciturn, heftily-accented team managers called Arsene or Joe-Say or Rafael and I hear only meaningless truisms about the run of play. I’m mystified as to whether League Division One is what we used to call League Division Two, or if it’s been shunted down to League Division Three because of something called the Champions League. My heart does not thrill to the news that Tranmere Rovers has inched up or down a couple of points in League Division This or That. I’m not what you’d call a natural football fan. Or perhaps it was part of the deal to release Norman Kember, that the group who’d been holding him could come here and kidnap as many pensioners as they like, as long as they stuck to retired local government employees.
More from Mark Steel. Then we could guarantee an adequately funded modern pension scheme – but instead it’s just “me, me, me” as usual.
One solution that radical think-tanks may have been investigating is to target sectors of the public-sector workforce nearing retirement and introduce them to bird flu. If the unions could for once put their narrow-minded attitudes to one side and act in the public interest, they’d instruct their members that when they get to 67 they should kill themselves. Away we go with the tirades about trade unionists protecting their privileges, or as the Daily Mail put it: “The stench of crude self-interest.” The trouble is, all reasonable people agree, we’re living longer than we used to. There is no need at all for us to do this, and we must stop it. www.noplaceforachild .uk
More from Deborah Orr.
The charity has many sensible ideas about how Britain could pull back from this excess it has fallen into, whereby we turn our eyes away as innocent children are imprisoned. It calls for detention for children to be stopped – and a system of incentivised compliance based on that adopted by the United States. The same might be said of Manuel Bravo, who hanged himself in Yarl’s Wood last year, before his son’s eyes, rather than return with his boy to Angola. By killing himself he made an unaccompanied minor of his son, and gained for him exceptional leave to remain.What are we to say to these people, who believe such suffering is worthwhile in the pursuit of a life in Britain? Maybe just that we are not so different to the repressive, unfair societies that they are fleeing – as far as they are concerned anyway.Save The Children, in coalition with the Refugee Council and Bail for Immigration Detainees, calls for a modest derogation from this firm line and asks that asylum-seeking children should be treated as children first and foremost, with their needs and interests represented by Britain’s children’s commissioners.
