Care of the elderly

I was doing a pastoral visit in an elderly care home the other day. As I was there I got to thinking about how the elderly are treated in this society. While I accept it is sometimes necessary for people to have to live somewhere with 24 hour care, it often seems it's a case of out of sight out of mind (and I am not just meaning the home I visited). Society doesn't want to see those who need everything done for them. Society just dumps them in a home and doesn't really think about them.
Around the world people can't believe how the elderly are treated in this country. The elderly are respected. Here they are often overlooked and patronised. Is it because they are old? Babies and children are seen in public every day. Their parents get child benefit, special deals in supermarkets, changing facilities etc, etc. They will be taken shopping, swimming, to the park, for walks and drives. Why doesn't this apply to the elderly? I know it's not straightforward, but it just doesn't seem right that the elderly are so poorly treated and disregarded.

Or are we scared to look in case we see the future? I do think that it's no wonder many people (myself included) sometimes say they'd rather go before that happens. Can a person in the latter stages of dementia have a good quality of life? I believe they can if we, as a society, want them to.

One thing I find fascinating is how little care workers in elderly care homes are paid. Sometimes, it's barely more than minimum wage. Those who look after children can be paid significantly more. But society is not prepared to ensure there is sufficient money paid for care to give a decent wage to carers. In doing so, the quality of care will improve, as it's possible to recruit the best staff with better pay.

So, should there be a 'national age service'? A guaranteed minimum level of care for the elderly, where caring is see as as much of a vocation as nursing. It would be nice, though I wonder if society would be prepared to pay for it. All I can say is a society is judged by how it treats the most excluded and marginalised. I would argue the elderly who need full-time care are pretty high up there.