Yorkshire Post

Care home truths

Facing the future over elderly

-

TODAY’S REPORT warning of a serious shortfall in the number of homes for the elderly comes a day after calls for a new Ministry of Demographi­cs to be created to plan for the forecast 10 million increase in Britain’s population over the next two decades.

Despite the thinktank Civitas making a persuasive case for a new Whitehall department just hours before the Local Government Associatio­n set out its considerab­le concerns, more politician­s – and quangos – are, with the greatest of respect, not necessaril­y the answer.

What Britain needs is more effective leaders who are capable of planning for the long term and working with others, both from the public and private sector, to ensure short-term decisions don’t have long-term repercussi­ons that Britain might live to regret. As the LGA report intimates, it’s absurd that local authority care homes are being shut when there’s likely to be a chronic shortage of such facilities in the medium term to accommodat­e a population that will be both older and, by its very nature, less mobile.

Not only does such short-sightednes­s fail to make sense when many NHS hospitals cannot discharge elderly patients who no longer require medical treatment because of community care shortcomin­gs, but it also highlights the need to plan ahead and ensure new properties are built with the immobile in mind so it is possible, for example, to fit a stairlift at a later date. This does not require another tier of politician­s; what it demands is a healthy dollop of common sense.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom