Author Archives: Maureen

The elderly and disabled cannot afford to wait

Every week brings more evidence of the growing crisis in care for older and disabled people.

By Liz Kendall MP, Shadow Minister for Care and Older People

7:00AM BST 08 May 2012

Appalling cases of abuse or neglect in hospitals and care homes have rightly hit the headlines. However, there is also a hidden care crisis affecting thousands of families across the country.

Many struggle to find the help they need when a loved one becomes ill or frail. Some elderly people end up with only 15 minute home visits to get them up, washed, dressed and fed.

Elderly care funding should focus on poorest, says Duncan Smith thinktank

Report by Centre for Social Justice calls for resources to be concentrated on pensioners with few or no assets

  • Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
  • guardian.co.uk,
Iain Duncan Smith’s thinktank, the Centre for Social Justice, says low pay, poor training and lack of oversight has to led to ‘very poor quality of home care for the most disadvantaged older people’. Photograph: Geoff Newton

Funding for the long-term care of elderly people should be targeted at the poorest pensioners with few or no assets, according to a report by Iain Duncan Smith‘s thinktank.

Our struggle with dementia may be ‘blueprint for care’

Syd Mayne has praised the support he and his wife received

By SUE GYFORD
Published on Monday 7 May 2012 12:00

THE self-penned story of a man whose wife was diagnosed with dementia is to be sent to 14,000 care home workers around Britain to encourage them to treat their residents with compassion.

Syd Mayne, 78, wrote Journey into Loneliness after his wife Kate moved from their home in Bonnyrigg to Springfield Bank Care Home in December 2010.

The book charts their life together, the struggle their family faced when Kate was diagnosed with dementia, and the dedication of staff at the care home. The couple met at a dance at the Fountainbridge Palais in 1954, and had three children. Mr Mayne became a TV writer and then sports writer at The Scotsman, and his wife, now 80, worked as a nursery nurse.