True and sadly common stories highlighting the lack of care for the elderly: 
An elderly woman waits a year and a half to have a bath cos social services deemed her outside their criteria to provide her with a bath lift. In the end, a charity bought one for her.
An elderly woman is on the verge of suicide cos her home is due to be repossessed leaving her homeless. Her landlord sold up, she didn’t want to move so the bank gave her a mortgage. She couldn’t afford the repayments on her basic pension. She also fell behind in paying for her gas and electricity, so they came out during Winter and (illegally) disconnected her.
An elderly man with mental health problems falls into arrears with his gas and electricity. The police arrest him, hold him in prison while British Gas change his meter to pre-payment.
An elderly couple in their 80s have been living off £90 a week since they retired. They had no idea there was help from the government. They’ve been using credit cards and store cards to supplement their income. They are in over £50,000 debt and seeking bankruptcy.
Man calls up the DWP saying he is starving. There is a 3 month delay in processing his pension. He is unable to get a Crisis Loan for food.
Man goes into his local Pension Office and slits his wrists because he is starving- there was a delay in processing his pension and he has no money. Never got into the press.
7 Comments
August 9, 2008 at 5:41 am
Thanks for this category Charlie. No one else is doing this, I know of. So perfectly like you.
These things are unbelievable but happen here too. I know many elders* who are homeless, or should I say, homeless who are elders, because there is such a shortage of affordable housing. Although some provinces have an allowance for housing, it’s a certain percentage of the difference between 30 percent of your income and the rent, and then there’s all the exceptions, and clauses, and trying to get help with filling out forms, because when you call government they just assume you have internet, or fax. Most poeple in that income bracket do not.
I have stopped calling older adults ’seniors’. It’s part of the the herding of older adults, children, youth. Everyone is now a group, not an individual, except adults. Did you know that? Nomenclature first, and then you disappear as a person. Anyway, elder sounds so much more elegant. I’m just going to do it, whether anyone else does or not.
August 9, 2008 at 11:12 am
I understand your concern around the use of language to refer to, as you say our elders. It’s difficult to know if use of language to refer to a ‘group’ actually patronises and degrades *them* (again maintaining a standpoint of difference as a relatively young person). But then again, there needs to be a term of reference to be able to discuss problems that many elderly people experience.
Over here, the council have a duty to house the elderly as they would be considered vulnerable, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there will be anything in the house when they move in- like a bed or a cooker…
What makes me sad is all the people in nursing homes, who are forgotten about. Who are sedated to keep them quiet.
August 9, 2008 at 7:08 pm
No censure of you for using seniors.
I hear elder here frequently, not just in the aboriginal community which has used it for some time. I really rankle at ‘grandmothers’.
The nursing homes here are also atrocious. Many are private now, with others a public/private partnership, and a few still the provincial health. I’ve read the basic for food for one person per day in the governement ones is $11. That amount goes to the better private ones too, but they top up. Those who have no family, or no-one who will advocate for them or bring extra food must exist on $11 a day food. The gov counts on people filling in, so they can keep cutting the budget.
I don’t know about nursing homes in the States. What happens to old and poor in a country where poor do not have healthcare?
This organization sprang up in one province, and is now beseiged by elders and families of other provinces. This woman has been threatened by lawsuits from medical professionals. She was quoted as saying that, and in order to protect herself, has any assets in other people’s names. Like her car, which she used to visit the elders.
Ruth Maria Adria – Elder Advocates Society
http://www.elderadvocates.ca
“We decry the fact that after more than three decades there is no legislation to protect the seniors of this province. There is no enforceable, protective legislation for those who live in the community nor for or those who reside in nursing homes. The deceptive, Protection For Persons In Care Act, which purports to protect vulnerable seniors has no power to do so. Those who administer the Act can only make recommendations. Furthermore, it is troubling, that government has failed to require that the many private, assisted living facilities which have sprung up across the province, be licensed by government.”
Old people, elders, are truly the most vulnerable, forgotten and neglected, subject to abuse because of that. When they cry and complain of the abuse, according to documents and interviews on the website, they are sedated. When Elder Advocates formally complian about the physicians, they get warning letters. I really think this is happening everywhere, and not something one can say, oh but my (Nigel) state, nursing home, doctor, wouldn’t do that.
So I think people should draw up a plan for how they will suicide, when the time they have chosen comes. I think, for me it will be no later than 85 if I am healthy, but sooner, if there is something that would require me to go into one of those places.
August 10, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I like the term ‘elders’ Sis. It has dignity.
I picked 86. Still a way off, and it depends on the quality of life (not just the bodily) until then. Those of us who are single, and have no children, are likely to be in the shittiest position financially.
August 11, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Sis, in my state (in the U.S.) nursing homes make you prove on the front end that the person who needs to be get admitted to the home has suffient income or else sufficient property (typically a paid-off home) to compensate them for the person’s care. If the income/property isn’t sufficient, they can forget about coming into the nursing home. They die or else someone (always FEMALE of course!) in the family takes them in. It’s disheartening to hear Canada and UK aren’t doing well for the elders, either. Thanks, Charlie and Sis, for the reportage.
August 15, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Definitely thanks to Charlie. We do need to know about this. We never think we will be there, it is sooo far away, and we believe the propaganda about these places being kind and caring, warmhearted caregivers. Then when we hear of atrocity, we think, oh well, she (yep) didn’t look after her mother or father properly. She chose the wrong place. My parent will never experience that.
Blame the individual. Blame the woman. Blame the victim.
They get away with it, because we are really not listening. We have very busy, exhausting lives. So many other issues seem more important.
Or hawt. Think about that.
Once when searching elder issues I typed in Older women something. The hit came up with porn. I coudn’t beleive it, but followed one link which opened to hundreds of links. I hit on one saying again, older women. It was of an elder women in a nursing home being raped. Sedated, obviously, and placed in a facilitating position. N*de, and being penetrated by one man, with another waiting, aroused. The men’s faces were not shown.
Adria, in that link, has a complaint to the Physicians and Surgeons College about a man sent from a nursing home to the provincial mental hospital when he kept resisting gential cleansing by male attendents. At the mental hospital he was heavily drugged with anti-psychotics. Adria says it is well known people are being abused when they are undergoing hygeine. Then it’s compounded by him being chemically lobotomized when he tries to defend himself. The College defends the doctor who prescribed heavy continuous doses. They blow it off, as can’t be proven, and say your compliant should go to the facility etc. Adria is a volunteer.
This area needs some youth and energy. These women there are all our mothers, aunts, defensless. And the few men there, well they are now too.
March 1, 2009 at 1:22 am
Charlie,
In my women’s studies class last year, we spoke a bit about ageism, and how it is important for feminists, as equalitarians, to bring light to this issue. It is, sadly, a type of predjudice, which is often overlooked. However, from what I have noticed, in my experience, it is one of the most common forms of predjudice, and what is even sadder to me is that the perpetrators tend to be young adults, like myself. I understand that this problem goes much further than some young student being rude to an elderly person in the grocery store, and that it spreads into bigger economic situations, like what you have spoken about in this post. However, I think that the revelation will stem from small changes in society’s general treatment of elderly individuals.