Abandoning our elderly

hAvING worked with the elderly for some time, I was reminded by reading about 92-year-old dementia sufferer elayne Moore-Clacy being sent home from hospital in her nightie, of the times when residents in the sheltered housing schemes in which I worked were sent home at night after hospital emergencies or operations.

One resident was packed off in a taxi at 11.45pm with a broken rib on the same day she was taken in as an emergency. Another lady who had a fall was sent home just after midnight after being taken to hospital in the afternoon. These are just two of several cases over the years.

We now tend to say to residents who are taken to hospital as an emergency: ‘have you got your cab fare home?’

What if these people had lived alone? For a supposedly advanced society, we tend to treat many of our elderly with total disdain. hospitals aren’t helping in the care of older people who need it most.

DEREK STOCKER, Bexhill on Sea, Sussex. IT BeGGARs belief that public sector organisations should waste so much time on red tape and so little on the delivery of the vital services they were created to provide.

Why, when there’s a chronic shortage of funds for elderly care, for example, do they waste precious resources on ‘ anti- radicalisation’ and ‘ how to apologise for our Christian heritage’ training, in addition to all the other equality and diversity courses on which they send their staff?

Now, it seems, they’re demanding this from their suppliers, too.

The abandoned, starving, elderly people shivering in their own urine, couldn’t give a flying fig as to whether the council staff now know the difference between hindus and Muslims or the difference between transsexuals and transvestites.

They just want carers who turn up on time, help them have a bath and get them some breakfast.

ALAN CARTER, Newcastle upon Tyne.