AN invitation to consider investing in Scotland’s private care home sector ought to carry the slogan ‘Let us prey’. Any business opportunity in which the paying customer is elderly and mentally infirm would be described as ‘low-hanging fruit’ by investment analysts. Many old people requiring care will also have property, savings and valuables. If you can’t make a financial killing in circumstances as favourable as these then you’re in the wrong game. There are 814 private care homes in Scotland, representing 58% of the market.

As decrepitude begins gently to nod in your direction you’d better start tooling up; you are about to enter shark-infested waters. You might think that having surviving an armed conflict or two; an economic crash and the challenges of keeping a family honest (all while paying your taxes) might entitle you to a peaceful epilogue. When the lights behind your eyes begin to flicker you’ll have earned your afternoon nap in a tartan blanket and the joy of old football pictures.

Instead you and your family are facing an army of apex predators. Even when you’re at your most mentally and physically robust the experience of dealing with lawyers, estate agents, banks and insurance firms – all at the same time – can leave you seeking professional help to repair your sense of self-worth. Imagine having to deal with such a calumny of capitalists as you enter the halls of codgerdom.

On top of this unlovely crew there are the care home privateers. I’ve always wondered why in 75 years of the NHS we have somehow contrived to permit an industry to thrive which is designed to make money out of people at their most mentally and physically fragile. There may be several reasons why property speculators would wish to invest in a group of care homes. Who knows, perhaps some of them really do want to provide care and compassion for the elderly at the end of their lives. And perhaps there really is a species of vegetarian alligators, stoating about the Amazon somewhere.

On its website, Care Information Scotland carries this warning: “The payment of care homes is a complex subject and depends on many things which are unique to you.” It’s the first indication that you are about to enter a dark place. You are further informed that the current rates even for ‘publicly-funded service-users’ are £714.90 a week for nursing care and £614.07 a week for residential care. Local councils, it points out, are required to set rates for the care homes they own and manage at a rate equal to the actual cost of providing accommodation and care.

Many hidden trip-wires lay in wait for those who were seduced by Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy initiative. It effectively destroyed the concept of affordable housing for the generations to come. This was one of them. Currently, if you have capital assets worth £26,500 or more, including the value of your home, you must meet your own care costs in full. For many people this means having to sell those homes they were told would unlock the key to prosperity. The great council house sell-off con was only ever about enriching the financial services industry.

The ravages of coronavirus have laid bare the massive gaps that exist in our duty of care to the elderly. Earlier this week my colleague Helen McArdle and I were contacted by several care workers in a private home. They were expressing genuine fear about the way their employers were dealing with an outbreak of Covid-19.

They came forward as a last resort, having been warned that any act of whistle-blowing would result in instant dismissal. Furthermore, they reported that the help they received from the Care Inspectorate was of the chocolate teapot variety.

This was just one of hundreds of care homes whose residents and their families found that in a health crisis such as this they were considered to be second class citizens. Personal Protective Equipment has been scarce and only now are Covid-19 deaths in these places being officially recorded.

Perhaps it’s naïve to have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ social care system for the old and infirm free at the point of delivery. And perhaps too those whose families can afford to contribute to their care must continue to do so. Yet there remains something pernicious and nasty in a system that encourages entrepreneurs to use old people as a means of topping up property portfolios.

Governments move rapidly to impose martial law in times of war and to enforce draconian restrictions on our daily freedoms. During this national health emergency politicians have reached for old war metaphors to convey the scale of the peril. Perhaps, post-coronavirus, we should consider enforcing a state of financial martial law. This would guarantee that our old and infirm are spared the lottery that passes for this country’s system of social care. This would mean tax increases to fund the wholesale nationalisation of our care homes and all care workers being trained and paid according to standard NHS levels. Perhaps though, we just don’t think they’re worth it.

Less than two years ago it was reported that almost 170,000 people across the UK were in arrears on social care repayments, including pensioners struggling to meet sharp increases in their care costs. Some of the cowboys in the private sector were also continuing to charge long after residents had died. Last year, according to Audit Scotland, the Scottish Government had forecast a £1.8bn gap in its projected £18.8bn funding for health and social care by 2024.

Yet, what price do we really place on the value of caring for the vulnerable? Holyrood is pressing to enable its Assisted Dying Bill and we are engaged on a system of eugenics by screening out Down Syndrome. The lives of the most vulnerable human beings in society – unborn children – have no protection at all. Our attitudes to those requiring our care and protection is one of callous indifference. We seem to consider them less than fully human.

Some of us who condemn capitalism and the inhumanity of the free market seem curiously keen to practice it in their choices about who deserves to be cared for.

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