Category Archives: Older care
Anger at ‘scandalous’ rise in charges for mum’s home help
A son who looks after his elderly mum says her care bill is set to triple to more than £18,000 under changes being introduced by the city council.
Widow Vera Hunt, 87, is disabled following a stroke four years ago. She is double incontinent with dementia and requires two carers to attend to her four times a day.
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Her son, Martin, 55, gave up his job and house to help care for Vera at the pensioner’s home in Wintersdale Road, near Uppingham Road, Leicester, but says her life savings will now be drained to pay for increased charges.
He is angry and deeply upset that every penny of savings put away by his parents, who had paid their taxes all their life, would have to be spent on his mum’s elderly care.
“She contributes more than £6,000 a year and because I’m looking after her she isn’t a burden to the local authority,” said Martin.
“I need carers to come in and help hoist her out of bed and change her incontinent pads, but apart from that I’m doing everything else.
The meals-on-wheels postcode lottery
Some councils are spending less than £4 a week on meals-on-wheels for elderly people while others spending almost 30 times that much, a study shows.
By John Bingham, Social Affairs Editor
7:00AM BST 31 May 2012
Campaigners said the figures exposed a “scandalous postcode lottery” in provision for the elderly.
It follows warnings that increasing numbers of older people are arriving in hospital showing signs of malnutrition.
A study based on official statistics by the data analysts, Ssentif, found that councils spend an average of just under £34 per person per week on meals for elderly people including meals on wheels services and luncheon clubs.
The politics of self-interest in addressing elderly care
PUBLISHED: 20:36, 30 May 2012 | UPDATED: 21:43, 30 May 2012
The cost of looking after old people is almost going to double in the next 20 years, and the number of people who will have to bear the crushing burden of paying for their own care will more than double.
This is what we are told in a report backed by eminently able academic researchers and published by the Local Government Association, the umbrella body of local councils.
It is local councils, of course, which run the bureaucratic organisations currently known as adult social services which are responsible for dishing out the meals on wheels, the bathroom safety fittings, and the caring workers who help wash and dress the vulnerable elderly.
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