I NOTE with interest your front-page report (“Better-off billed thousands more for care home costs”, The Herald, December 1). I t is about time this was highlighted in the media, but, your headline is wrong: it is not only the well-off who have to pay for their own care. It is anyone who lives alone and owns their own home, regardless of income.

I can give a true example of a pensioner living alone on a single-person state pension and on income support paying for their own care. This person had vascular dementia and required help with daily aspects of life, dressing, eating, taking medication and many other dementia related challenges. Yes, they owned their own home valued at just over £100,000 (a council house bought and maintained by their sons many years before a place in a care home was needed). Being a home owner was the reason given for being billed for most of the care costs. The family were told that the house would have to be sold within 12 months and the funds from the sale lodged in a bank account to contribute towards care costs.

Over a short time, more than £55,000 was paid by this pensioner towards their care costs before they died. The family appealed and went as far as the Cabinet Secretary for Health at the time Alex Neil, who rejected the appeal. Yes, this is indeed a dementia tax, because I know of no other physical or mental illness where anyone on the NHS is required to contribute towards their care costs.

Dementia is an illness and should be treated as such and penalising people who have dementia and families who try to care for them is wrong. So no, it is not just the well-off who prop up the care system, even if your annual income puts you in the income support level and you own a property, you will pay. This is a sorry reflection on a society that applies a financial penalty on those who are ill and frail, require care and who are at their most vulnerable. The pensioner above I knew very well; she was my mother.

John McKenzie,

Bentfield Drive,

Prestwick.

YOUR report highlights how for so many of our senior citizens, the Scottish Government’s much-vaunted free care for the elderly is an ironic misnomer (“Better-off billed thousands more for care home costs, The Herald, December 1). For a significant proportion of our ageing population, the prospect facing them if ill-health and dementia start to take their toll is that lifetime savings and eventually the proceeds of the sale of their family home will almost entirely be used up for their care if they ultimately need an extended period in a nursing home.

With the findings of the latest Competition and Markets Authority analysis, showing a 40 per cent higher rate charged to privately funded residents compared with those funded by cash-strapped councils, the whittling away of a lifetime of savings is speeding up. This of course comes as a direct result of the SNP’s 10-year onslaught on local authority budgets, leaving them severely underfunded and with no choice but to in-turn squeeze the payments to care homes and other third sector providers.

One outcome of this is that the SNP no longer need worry about getting its hands on inheritance tax powers, as sadly for so many families in Scotland there will simply be nothing left.

Keith Howell,

White Moss, West Linton, Peeblesshire.

I WRITE to welcome Age Scotland’s “No-one should have no-one” campaign which has been launched to highlight the extent of loneliness throughout the country this festive period (“60,000 older Scots alone at Christmas”, The Herald, December 1).

The numbers are sad and sobering. What is even worse is truly considering a day in the life of just one older person living this reality.

Loneliness is the biggest issue facing our ageing population but it is one which we can all do something about. Eradicating social isolation for tens of thousands of people is a monumental task – but taking the time to have a chat and enjoy a cup of tea with just one older person is not. That is how we need people to think.

We also need to reach out to these older people and encourage them to connect with some of the support services that are available to them. Taking control and asking for help is something to be proud of, rather than embarrassed about.

Our monthly afternoon tea parties have the most incredible impact on our guests. They tell us month after month how grateful they are for the friendships formed within their Contact the Elderly groups. Likewise, our volunteers get so much from the events and equally enjoy their afternoons.

Morna O’ May,

Head of Service – Scotland, Contact the Elderly,

The Acres,

Kippen, Stirlingshire.

AS a retired parish minister I do not believe one can discuss loneliness among the elderly today without acknowledging the contribution, often self-inflicted, of divorce. It devastated my wartime-born generation and the baby boomers so that a side-effect of our increasing lifespan is a rise in grey divorce on both sides of the Atlantic.

Sadly, marital instability earlier in life contributes to the rate for adults over 50 where divorce among the remarried is double that of those who only married once. A study, published by the Office for National Statistics, talks of the “loneliness time bomb” and shows it’s most acute among the divorced and those who live alone.

We betrayed Generation X and deserve to be accused of the sociopathic tendencies that undermined the prosperous and progressive country we inherited. It’s good to see the divorce rate is much lower among Gen X and the Millennials. If we are to suffer for our youthful folly, let us for once try to do so with our parents’ stiff upper lip.

Rev Dr John Cameron,

10 Howard Place, St Andrews.

YOU report that a stroke patient, Mark Lilburn, has won his appeal against the Department of Work and Pensions decision to declare him fit for work (“Stroke patient wins fit-to-work ruling”, The Herald, November. It is also reported that "a DWP spokeswoman said: "Only a small proportion of all decisions are overturned at appeal.” I feel I cannot let this statement go unchallanged. It was reported in March that close to two-thirds of appeals in Personal Independence Payment claims (65 per cent) are successful.

This cannot be described as a small proportion.

Stuart Adamson,

48 Crosshill Road, Strathaven.