NEGLECT IN THE CARE OF AGED IN BRITAIN

Wanganui Chronicle, 20 January 1947, Page 7

NEGLECT IN THE CARE OF AGED IN BRITAIN

NUFFIELD ENLIGHTENING REPORT ON CONDITIONS London, Jan. 16. A disturbing counterpart to the Curtis report upon the neglect of orphan children is published by the Nuffield Foundation, and is attracting fully as much interest It deals with the care of the aged and poor, who are forced either to enter public institutions or go into privately-owned homes. Like the Curtis report, the Nuffield Foundation survey reveals deplorable conditions of exploitation and indifference in the treatment of the aged, who are unable to rely upon protection or the interest of relatives. Not all of the public institutions or voluntary homes inspected by the members of the Nuffield committee are critic--ised. A considerable number, it was stated, are 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 odd people as lodgers, each of them paying her three guineas a week. The house was dirty and smelly, much of the furniture broken, and seven of the inmates had to be removed owing to their state of neglect. The majority of tne old people living in this house appeared frightened of the proprietress and were 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, inmates were found naked in bed, and often crying. The proprietress, 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, dirty and unsuitable accommodation. One senile inmate was customarily tied to the bed and another was found with gangrenous hands and feet.

The committee found 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 the old people lodged with mentally deficient children, in another the rules were so harsh that old men and women were forbidden to go in the garden together, and in a number more there were quite unnecessary restrictive regulations about the receiving of visitors. In many cases old people living alone on pensions were found existing in small, damp, and dirty rooms,wit bad or inconvenient sanitary arrangements, without nursing care or supervision. In many cases these people were victims of calculating exploitation.

The survey covers men over the age of 65 and women over 60, th& earliest age at which State pensions are paid. It estimates that if the present population trends continue in Britain, in 40 years’ time the number of people above these age-s will be equal to the number of young people and may by then have reached a stage at which the care and maintenance of so large a number “may become so great as to result in the lowering of the national standards of living."

Dealing with the question of poverty, the report states that as a result of the introduction of the Old Age and Widows’ Pension Act of 1940, which established supplementary pensions for the aged, there is no such acute poverty as previously existed among elderly people, “although there still is a measure of austerity/ It is with conditions under which many of these old people are compelled 1o 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 the accommodation should be set aside for the aged; that small communal houses should be set up by the State; 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. J. Seabohm Rowntree, and included advisory Government members.