Parents are so worried about the behaviour of nursery workers looking after their children that they are installing secret cameras to keep tabs on them. Can you imagine the outrage that would follow this story, if it were true? Yet when, as the Times reports today, the vulnerable people concerned are elderly, then the abuse attracts far less attention. The newspaper reported this morning that charity Action on Elder Abuse is encouraging people to install hidden cameras in the rooms of older relatives to monitor their carers. The charity’s helpline received 7,529 calls from people worried they were victims of financial abuse last year, up from 3,500 the previous year.
It’s not just financial abuse, but regular newspaper exposés, particularly by the Mirror newspaper, of shocking standards in care homes. And then more widely there is the chronic underfunding of social care, something that the 2 per cent precept on council tax bills will not go anywhere near plugging. All of these problems continue because as a society we don’t care about old people. This is probably partly because we are scared of death and would rather not think very much about old age and what happens to us, but that doesn’t excuse our neglect of and disrespect for older people. We call them ‘bed blockers’ when they are stuck in hospital thanks to a lack of appropriate support at home. We don’t make wills or consider whether CPR, a brutal practice that only restores a tiny number of patients to a bearable life, is something we really want at the end of our days. Doctors shun geriatrics as an unfashionable specialty. Politicians don’t visit the wards with old people on them, preferring the shiny premature baby units and oncology clinics for their photo ops. Our fear of death makes dying more fearful, and our phobia of older age means a situation that would be unacceptable for any other age group can continue ad nauseam.
If we had a more mature approach to maturing, then we would realise that financial abuse of older people and inadequate care visits that leave the wisest people in society stuck in bed, alone, are a national scandal, not just one of those things that happen when you get old. Back pain is what happens when you get old, not abuse and neglect.
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