How about really caring for elderly people?

With a monthly newsletter to write, I spend time squirrelling away snippets of information that I think are interesting, and could form the basis of a piece in the next issue. Looking through the notes I've accumulated since January, a couple of recurring themes stand out, which have occupied quite a lot of space in the media, and which are thought-provoking not least for their mutual contradiction.

There was quite a brouhaha about compulsory retirement ages, and whether or not the government was planning to abolish the concept of a set age at which people would be expected to retire (everybody can, of course, ask their employer to let them continue working beyond this age). It has always seemed to me a sad waste of talent and experience when people sail off into the sunset of economic inactivity with the prospect of perhaps 30 years or so ahead of them. When we are also, as a society, scratching our heads about how we are going to meet the costs of having so many older citizens kicking about for so much longer, encouraging us to accept the idea of a default retirement age somewhere in the 60s seems quite ridiculous.

The only conceivable reason I can see for making people retire is if they are acting as "job-blockers", preventing youngsters from gaining employment, but is this really often the case? Yes, it is shocking to hear of school-leavers facing extended periods of unemployment because of the economic conditions, but surely it is equally unacceptable to shunt older people into a non-productive limbo, possibly for decades? We shouldn't have to to compete as demographic groups, we just all need to be more flexible in our approach to work: perhaps intersperse periods of study or training with employment; work part-time; be prepared to take a less demanding (and less well-paid) role as an older employee; do voluntary work; or set up our own businesses, either full or part-time.

Almost simultaneously, there has been a slew of stories about policies and costs around care of the elderly, from revelations that the government's Dementia Strategy has only been implemented in a patchy manner, despite the funding allocated to PCTs to enable them to deliver, at a time when the number of sufferers in the country has suddenly been revised upwards from 700,000 to 820,000. And now we have the unedifying sight of government promising free social care to all elderly people with critical needs, while the local authorities responsible for delivering that care are reduced to writing letters to the papers explaining how it is impossible for them to meet this commitment, because the cost has been wildly underestimated. Michael Parkinson's plea for older people to be treated with dignity (how often have we heard this one? and does anything ever seem to change?) arrived in the middle.

Perhaps if the rest of the population didn't get accustomed to viewing anybody over the age of 65 as a non-contributing potential burden, then the dignity and respect would follow. And the added advantage of working on for as long as you feel able - all that exercise, both physical and mental, keeps you in better shape, and more likely to avoid developing dementia… that's what I'm banking on, anyway!