We must ensure our old folk are treated with respect

Abuse and neglect complaints about treatment in care homes were up 60% last year to 275. And while those involving “care at home” were much lower at 73, they showed a six-fold increase in five years. Since 2004 the Care Commission has recorded 1529 abuse and neglect complaints against care homes for adults, more than 800 of which were upheld. The graph is moving in the wrong direction.

We’re talking about the most vulnerable people in society suffering physical assault, theft, inadequate feeding or verbal mistreatment from those who are paid to look after them. We’re talking about our parents and grandparents. Sooner or later we will be talking about us. We must improve the system while we still have the clout to do so.

On that future day when the carers enter your room, will they greet you and inquire about your day as they assist you to the bathroom, freshen up your clothing and prepare your food -- or will they continue their own conversation across your head as they propel you along? Will you, despite deafness and disability remain a person worthy of respect in their eyes -- or will you be seen and treated as a task to be dealt with as fast as their time sheet demands? It’s an attitude that wouldn’t merit reporting to the authorities but it would make your life miserable.

Right now none of us could guarantee the answer.

Some people are fortunate. My own mother is one of them. She has carers whom she knows well and who are nice to her whether or not the family is present. We know this because she is alert and articulate and fortunate enough to have a character both sweet and self assertive, so that people who work with her like her.

It’s an important consideration. Care workers assist the pleasant and well mannered as well as the unpleasant and difficult. They work in homes that are clean and functional and those that are not. Their tasks are physically challenging, sometimes unpleasant and repetitive. Their efforts may or may not be appreciated. Their salary cheque is not large.

I’m not making excuses for the bad eggs but it is important to note that most carers are kindly, well meaning people. Thanks to them the modern family is freed from looking after the older generation; something their forebears would envy. Complaints against care workers that are upheld, number in their hundreds. The interactions between carers and their patients must run to millions. Carers deserve credit for what they do well and encouragement to raise their professional standards to do it better still.

At the same time, those amongst them who let the side down should pay a stiff price. Abuse of the elderly -- be it physical, emotional or financial -- is as unacceptable as mistreating a child, for people are equally vulnerable at either end of the age range.

So how do we encourage and maintain best practice? How do we establish a system that we’d be happy to be served by?

It starts with the example we set and the attitudes we instil in our children.

I have a young Chinese friend who tells me that in her country when you enter a room, you speak first to the eldest person present then work your way down the age range. It is a matter of respect. In this country we rush to the baby and fuss over the toddler. The oldest are left to last -- if they are acknowledged at all.

Babies are transported in carriages fit for princes and at a princely cost. They are dressed in designer outfits when they are totally unaware of anything but the comfort of the fit and they are drowned in expensive gifts when they find the wrapping paper more entertaining.

Their grandparents, having reached an age when light, warm, soft, cashmere or well chosen flowers are much appreciated treats, are handed talcum powder -- an item whose use has yet to reveal itself to me.

It was Germaine Greer who pointed out the invisibility that settles over middle aged women. It takes a little longer to envelop men but once in place, it doesn’t lift. The only old men we see on popular television bumble around in Last of the Summer Wine. Long gone is the public perception of the white-haired sage or the wise old woman. Yet JK Galbraith was still a leading intellectual in his nineties and PD James is still teaching us how to write books in her 80s.

So what message are we sending out? Could it be that the young matter and the old do not? Is that why people take pride in being a nanny; why the job can command bed, board and the use of a car while being a carer for the elderly often equates with the minimum wage?

The baby boomers, among whom I number, have tailored life to suit ourselves because we have the power of numbers. We’ve had free education, lasting careers and babies. We’ve had marriage and divorce without scandal, single parenthood and gay rights. We’ve had free, world class health screening and beauty products that allowed us to make 50 the new 30. In short we’re spoiled rotten.

We’ve no intention of reaching dependency within 30 years but it better be good when we get there. That means paying close attention the next time we visit an elderly friend or relative. It means mentally slotting into their shoes, into their wheelchair and seeing how we will like the view when we no longer call the shots.

It means establishing that carers

are given professional pride by providing them with more training and paying them more money. It means increasing the care allowance for family members. It means ridding the system of abuse now. It means helping others so that we in our turn will be helped. It means checking out (before we vote) whether small government means small state assistance. It means ring fencing care in old age by making sure that when the coming economic cuts bite deep, care of the elderly is seen as so important that Trident goes first.