Channel 4 are running a series of programmes this week called The Trouble With Old People, and I’ve just watched the first programme by Tony Robinson called Me and My Mum. The programme started as a story about Tony trying to in effect come to terms with putting his mother in a care home, as it progressed he address the terrible situation in which we are dealing with our older people.

It reminded me of when both my granddad’s were in care at the end of their lives. My mum’s dad (Grampa George) suffered a stroke and while he couldn’t care for himself completely he didn’t really need to be in a home, it wasn’t a bad home (although I’ve been told its now much worse than it was) but it had this very clinical unfriendly manner to it. It wasn’t, and couldn’t be, ‘his’ home. But at least he had his own room.

My dad’s dad (Silly Granddad) had been ill for many years after catching an illness on holiday which he never recovered from. Nanny (my dad’s mum) had cared for him in their home since his return to the UK. Eventually the care need was too heavy and the decision was made to place him in a care home, it was one of the best places around but I absolutely hated visiting it. It didn’t have as clinical a feel as Grampa George’s but it had a horrible air detachment, which was compounded by Silly Granddad’s lack of coherence and realisation of his situation. It was, as no doubt many places are, a place to prolong death and manage the process of dying rather than providing a home in which people can be cared in.

While luckily it will be a few more years before my parents reach a situation where I and my sister and brother have to make decisions about our parents’ care arrangements, but as a society we are living longer and the dependency ratio is reducing. And nor is it that very few people have to deal with this: my mum’s oldest friend has had to deal with her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease; her best friend down in Bromley recently had to deal with trying to find her husband’s father a space in a home; I went with mum to church on Sunday and the vicar mentioned the problems she having with her parents. And that’s just the cases I can quickly recall. I’m sure a number of people I know have elderly relatives in care homes or in situations of care need.

The Victorian’s had what we would probably see as strange culture of death, which with the developments of medical has been lost. Not only that we do not respect old age: we glamourise youth and impoverish our old people.

Not only are there in some cases exorbitant costs involved with care, that force people to sell their homes, but for those taking time out to care for relatives we as a society pay pittance in assistance payments. The problem with care isn’t the only issue, so too is the precarious situation we are in with pensions. We seem to be aware of these situations but at the same time completely detached from not really putting much of our thinking towards them.

While they are issues I am genuinely worried about in relation to my parents’ and my own eventual old age, my selfish side is worried because if as society we don’t think about it properly soon my generation are going to have to have a serious problem to deal with (and pay for).