Why can’t we take care of our elderly?

Why is it that we still can’t seem to take proper care of our elderly? In a damning report this week, the Commons health select committee has charged that some elderly people are suffering hardship and diminished quality of life because of cuts to services.

The findings also led to MPs warning that frail pensioners are being “passed like parcels” between different agencies, as savage council cuts in particular have limited free care to those in greatest need.

The health committee suggests that failure to link up commissioning and provision across the services in particular is leading to more hospital admissions, later discharge and poorer outcomes.

But the consequences for providers are “no less stark”, as it’s claimed that the NHS will fail to meet its efficiency saving targets of 4 per cent every year over the next four years, according to the report.

Although the government has committed and extra £2bn a year for social care by 2014/15, MPs have also warned that this will not be enough.

It’s becoming evident, too, that we are all literally having to pay the price of decades of underfunding, rationing and declining standards.

It seems a great and desperate irony that we can talk about the need to pay obscene City bonuses in order to ensure that supposedly uniquely talented individuals keep their business talents in the UK, yet we have gone decades without a visionary who could lead our health services through the necessary reforms and improvements.

Anyone who has been in hospital, or had their life saved or cared for by a nurse or doctor, will tell you that such people are literally priceless.

Sadly, such skills and devotion are poorly compensated for, while the NHS and our social service models are collapsing under the weight of overpaid, under-skilled civil servants and bureaucrats.

It’s highly unlikely that pen-pushers or politicians will ever sort out our social and health services.

In most cases our caring services were founded by Christian visionaries and idealists, and such people continue to do so at the front line.

Surely there must be somewhere a person of vision and ability who can step in to solve this crisis?