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Pensioners Protest Against Home Care
Charges
By
Lyndsay
Moss
,
PA
News
via Scotsman.com
November 11, 2003
Broadcaster
and campaigner Claire Rayner led a protest to
Downing
Street
today to call for greater financial support for those needing long-term
care.
Wheelchair-bound
Rayner, who spent three weeks in intensive care earlier this year after
suffering multiple organ failure following an operation on a tendon,
handed in a 100,000 name petition to No 10.
War
veterans, disabled people, pensioners and younger supporters also joined
the Armistice Day protest organised by the Right to Care coalition.
The
campaigners are worried that under current rules patients in hospital
receive assistance with personal care such as bathing and bandaging free
of charge, but those in their own home or care homes have to pay.
This,
they say, is unfair because it discriminates against older and disabled
people.
Members
of the campaign, including Unison, Age Concern and the NHS Support
Federation, said the system judged that 120,000 people in care homes are
too rich for state help and have to pay for their own care.
But
official figures reveal that 61% of these people have an income under £200
a week but have to pay care home bills of more than £300.
Protesters
carried giant medals on their
Whitehall
visit with the slogan: “No Medal for Mr Blair – thousands still paying
for care.”
Also
present were Rodney Bickerstaffe of the National Pensioners Convention and
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Paul Burstow.
Mr
Burstow said: “The Government has betrayed a generation of older people
who the Prime Minister promised, before the 1997 election, would not be
forced to sell their homes to pay for their basic care.
“Ministers
are mistaken if they think this fundamental issue of fairness will go
away.
“The
elderly, who have worked and paid taxes all their lives, expected that
care would be there when they needed it and now this Government is
defending attacks on the sick elderly which denies them their dignity.”
Rayner
added: “A quarter of us will need long-term care at some time in our
lives and thousands of people with low incomes are currently having to pay
for it.
“How
can it be fair that we share the cost of treating cancers, but not that of
caring for people with medical problems like dementia?
“Those
who have given a lifetime of service to this country deserve better and
society has an obligation to offer them much more support.”
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