Sooner or later many of us will need care because we are no longer able to manage unsupported. It is past time for reform.
"Instead of facilitating the care of children, older people, disabled and learning disabled people, our care system facilitates the extraction of value and wealth from places and local public service budgets. While executive pay booms, frontline workers receive little more than the minimum wage."
https://neweconomics.org/2025/11/ending-extraction-in-the-uk-care-system
Yes, when I was a lad, my hometown of Eastbourne in Sussex (a bit of a 'god's waiting room') both needed and had ample provision for the care of the elderly and infirm in the shape of the huge All Saints Hospital, along with Downside Hospital and several other units of varying sizes. These were entirely dedicated to geriatric medicine. They did have a bit of a reputation for being places that once admitted to them, you only came out in a box not altogether true but...
All those places were run by the NHS then in a stoke of pure genius, the responsibility for caring for the elderly was transferred to local authorities who farmed it out to to the private sector. Thus we now find ourselves in the invidious position of having 1000s of beds in hospitals blocked by patients too frail or unwell to return to their former living arrangements but for whom no other accommodation is available! As I said a stoke of total fcükin GENIUS!
@Paulos_the_fog - just so, and having recently been discharged from a hospital bed, I am acutely aware that had I been unable to look after myself at home I would have joined the long queue for expensive places when the owners and companies that own the places cream a substantial amount off the top of the fees charged.