• Grandparents are caring for their children’s children, thus releasing parents for paid work.

• Self-sacrificing married people are nursing their spouses at home for as long as they possibly can, rather than see them becoming permanently hospitalised.

So it’s a mistake to equate old age with a burden on the State. There’s also a malevolent rumour that elderly people should look after themselves and young people are more worthy of our attention. That needs to be scotched. There are 800,000 older people who need special care. They are the ones who are old and poor, old and housebound, old and ill, old and afraid of tomorrow because their savings have gone.

Ray, who is 83, reckons she has saved the state more than half a million pounds over the last 20 years by looking after her friend Chris, 72. Chris has ME, is doubly incontinent and needs her food pureed and then fed to her. Their joint savings have gone down from £50,000 to £8,000 and they have had to reduce the amount of paid help. They need assurance for the future.

David is 76 and barely mobile, with no family nearby. He shares with the local authority the cost of four visits from carers each day. His share has gone up and the carers’ hours have gone down. He is worried about what could happen next.

Anne, 64, was a nurse and looks after her husband Reggie, who was a doctor until he had a stroke which left him incontinent and in need of constant care, often through the night. He now has vascular dementia. Although carers get him up in the morning and he visits a day centre three times a week, Anne can’t take the extended rest she needs. Her own health is failing and she is concerned about tomorrow.

These are the people who saw the launch of the Social Service State after the Second World War and contributed towards it throughout their working lives. They raised families and worked hard in the confidence that they lived in a caring society which, when their turn came, would come to the rescue if need be.

Our Coalition Government is to be commended for acting quickly on that part of its Programme for Government, headed “Pensions and Older People”, by setting up the Dilnot Commission.

That Commission’s report, “Fairer Funding For All” found that “the current funding system is in urgent need of reform: it is hard to understand, often unfair and unsustainable. People are left exposed to potentially catastrophic care costs with no way to protect themselves.”

It proposes a means-tested threshold of £35,000, after which the state would pick up the cost of care. Those paying for residential care would be allowed to keep assets up to £100,000. The proposals would cost around £1.7 billion out of a total government expenditure of just under £700 billion.

We are now at a crossroads. The charity AgeUK has found it necessary to run a Care in Crisis campaign ahead of a White Paper from the Government, expected within the next few months because, it says, “the current adult social care system in England is in financial crisis and needs urgent lasting reform.”

Throughout the Bible, the test of a compassionate society was how widows and orphans were treated. Long before there was anything like a Welfare State, these were the two groups identified as most needing support because they could not help themselves. For ‘widows and orphans’ then, read ‘the most vulnerable people in the UK now’. They are God’s test of our compassion and we will be judged for how we treat them.

You will know that “honour thy father and thy mother” is one of the Ten Commandments. You may not know that it continues: “Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you”. In other words, treat today’s older generation in the way you hope to be treated when your turn comes.

What will happen if you don’t? The story of the old man and his grandson, from Grimms’ Fairy Tales, suggests an answer to that question. Here it is.

There was once a very old man, whose eyes had become dim, his ears dull of hearing, his knees trembled, and when he sat at table he could hardly hold the spoon, and spilt the broth upon the table-cloth or let it run out of his mouth. His son and his son’s wife were disgusted at this, so the old grandfather at last had to sit in the corner behind the stove, and they gave him his food in an earthenware bowl, and not even enough of it. And he used to look towards the table with his eyes full of tears. Once, too, his trembling hands could not hold the bowl, and it fell to the ground and broke. The young wife scolded him, but he said nothing and only sighed. Then they brought him a wooden trough, out of which he had to eat.

They were once sitting thus when the little grandson of four years old began to gather together some bits of wood upon the ground. ‘What are you doing there?’ asked the father. ‘I am making a little trough,’ answered the child, ‘for father and mother to eat out of when I am big.’

We all know there are going to be cuts in Government expenditure. We dare not cut compassion. Our nation’s humanity is at stake.

:: Dr John Sentamu is the Archbishop of York

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/financialservices/