BRITAIN’S AGED POOR

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25085, 17 January 1947, Page 7

BRITAIN’S AGED POOR

EXPLOITATION AND NEGLECT REVEALED BY SURVEY (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON. Jan. 16.’ A disturbing counterpart to the Curtis Report upon the neglect of orphan children has been published by the Nuffield Foundation and is attracting fully as much interest It deals with the care of the aged poor, who are forced either to enter public institutions or to go into privatelyowned homes. Like the Curtis Report the Nuffield Foundation survey reveals deplorable conditions of exploitation ana indifference in the treatment of the aged, who are unable to rely upon the protection of interest of relatives. Not all of the public institutions or voluntary homes inspected by members of the Nuffield Inquiry Committee are criticised. A considerable number are stated to be entirely satisfactory, and many of them have been modernised. But in others what the report describes as shocking cases of cruel exploitation are cited. In one home a woman who previously had her licence for a nursing home cancelled because a patient was found to be verminous, had 30 old people as lodgers, each of them paying her three guineas a week. The house was dirty and smelly, much of the furniture was broken, and seven of the inmates had to be removed because of tne state of neglect. Most of the old people living in this house appeared frightened of the proprietress, and so terrified of being sent to a public institution that they would not complain. In another house where six or eight old women were accommodated the inmates were found naked in bed and often crying. The oroprietress, who was recently certified as a dipsomaniac, refused to answer questions about her lodgers’ welfare. In yet another “home” the proprietress charged five guineas a week for crowded, filthy, unsuitable accommodation. One senile inmate was customarily tied to a bed, and another was found with gangrenous hands and feet.

The committee found that the biggest burden of the aged was loneliness and apathy. In one public institution. which had only one chair for each inmate, there was nothing whatever for the residents to do. As a result they simply sat against walls

waiting for the next meal. All of them were in a state of acute depression. In another such institution, old people were lodged with mentally deficient children; in another the rules were so harsh that old men and women were forbidden to go in to the garden together; and in a number of others there were quite unnecessarily restrictive regulations about receiving visitors.

In many cases old people living alone on pensions were found in small, damp, dirty rooms with bad or inconvenient sanitary arrangements, without nursing care or supervision. In many cases these people were victims of calculated exploitation. The survey .covers men over the age of 65 and women over 60, the earliest ages at which Slate pensions are paid. It estimates that if present population trends continue in Britain, in 40 years’ time the number of people above these ages will equal the number of young people, and that the care and maintenance of so large a number “may become so great as to result in a lowering of the national standards of living.” Dealing with poverty, the report states that as a result of the Old Age and Widows’ Pensions Act of 1940, which established supplementary pensions for the aged, <here was no such acute poverty as previously existed among elderly people, “although there is still a measure of austerity.’’ It is with the conditions under which many of these old people are compelled to live, not with their subsistence level, that the report finds fault As immediate remedies, the report recommends that all voluntary homes for old people should be compulsorily registered and inspected, that almshouses be repaired and modernised, that in all housing projects a certain proportion of accommodation should be set aside for the aged, that small communal houses should be set up by the State, and that suitable welfare services should be established to organise amenities for elderly people. The report is the work of a small group of responsible investigators headed by Mr B. Seabohm Rowntree and including advisory members. j£|