Author Archives: wendy

It’s never too late to be an advanced achiever

January 1, 2013   Carers, family, Older care

New year means a new you – and the age at which we are changing our lives is going up all the time. Jerome Taylor reports on the ‘advanced achievers’

Sunday 30 December 2012

After the fireworks come the resolutions. The new year is that time in our lives when we think about fresh horizons and greener pastures. But those who might be tempted to state that change is a young person’s game need to think again. With our maturing but increasingly healthy population, age should no longer be the thing that stops us trying out something new.

Take Srikumar Sen, a former boxing correspondent who, at the age of 81, has published his first work of fiction, a novel that has already won a literary award. Buoyed by the success of his debut, he has now at work on his second book.

Dame Joan Bakewell, the previous government’s voice for elder people and a critic of society’s lack of imagination when it comes to the country’s ageing population, says retirement is no longer about finding a hobby to keep you occupied. It is an opportunity to grab a new lease of life. “It’s enormously reinvigorating to find a new interest or activity as you grow older,” she says. “It stops you slowing down and getting stuck in a routine. It keeps people young and it opens up new friendships, gives people skills they perhaps didn’t know they had.” She adds: “Things are much more flexible and they’ve got to get more so. Our country has got to harness the skills of older people. Employers have got to get more flexible, use the skills that are there and keep old people young.”

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Sponsorship money raised for family carers

January 1, 2013   Carers

Published on Monday 31 December 2012 10:02

A cheque for four figures has been handed over to Suffolk Family Carers by Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service.

The money comes from the service’s extreme charity ladder climb in July.

In total, £4,000 was raised by firefighters, councillors and staff in aid of the 2012 chief fire officer’s challenge.

The latest cheque handed over, though, was for just over £1,271.

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Care of the elderly: it's not too late to make Britain a good place in which to grow old

December 30, 2012   Carers, Older care

At this time of year as families gather, our thoughts turn to the nation’s elderly and how to provide for them fairly

 

The elderly need the cap on social care to be honoured and paid for fairly.

Over Christmas and New Year, families gather, take stock and compare notes. One family’s grandfather died after just retiring, but an elderly aunt, who has never taken any exercise, is living well into her 90s and racking up enormous care bills. It is never more obvious that life expectancy, even allowing for the inequalities of class, is still a roll of the dice. The healthy die of the unexpected, while the unhealthy can live well beyond their expected span.

Figures confirm the reality. You could be among the one in four people who, after they reach 65, will spend very little or nothing on their care before they die. Alternatively, you could be among the one in 10 with some endemic ailment who will spend more than £100,000 and, on current rules, be forced to sell your house to pay for the care. In an ageing society, this is beginning to become a politically hot issue.

Nor have the consequences of age and infirmity much to do with virtue, “striving” or your due deserts. If you have been dealt the wrong genes – dementia, say, or some crippling disability – you will be hit however virtuously you have lived, and the care costs could be explosive and long lasting. This is one of the brute hazards of life.

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