Is this how we should be treating elderly people? (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Is this how we should be treating elderly people?

10:42am Wednesday 12th November 2008

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Sir – I read with dismay about the proposed termination of the meals on wheels service in the borough.

As a former volunteer for this service, I can recall many episodes where we found clients in difficult, sometimes life-threatening, situations.

Such as the time when I found an elderly man sitting in his armchair, which he had managed to set alight with a cigarette. He would have suffered a horrific fate, had we not turned up.

Likewise a lady who had managed to pull a wardrobe over and was trapped underneath.

Or a lady who, in her state of Alzheimer’s, had locked herself out of her flat in the nude. And countless old people, having been got up by a carer and sat in an armchair, with the midday sun, by now, shining in through the window, so that they were baking, TV blaring at its loudest, and not being able to move to help themselves.

Apart from the danger in leaving old and frail people to care for themselves, we must also take into account the importance of contact with the outside world and with other people.

This is not how 21st century England should be treating its elderly and fragile population.

Do the people who suggest these “reforms” ever consider the fact they might get old themselves?

BIRGIT O’BRIEN
Waldegrave Park
Twickenham

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