The Mail, Saturday February 15th 2020. ‘Workfare for care home residents’ by Christabel Flint.

Maisie Duff, 85, is a great-grandmother, has two artificial hips and is partially sighted. She is one of 65 residents in the Victoria Place Care Home at Brackside in Berkshire, and has been told she will have to work two days a week if she wants to remain in the home. Her only son David, 52, said: “It’s a disgrace. She’s got no money left, and social services won’t pay the fees the care home owners charge.”

VC ElderHealthcare, owners of the home, told The Mail that the weekly cost of looking after each resident was £1,200, but that social services contributed a maximum of £800, and only for those residents who have no more money or assets of their own. “We can’t keep our homes open if we are losing money,” said VC’s chief executive Freddie Gospill. “So we have initiated a scheme for able residents to work, helping with cleaning, cooking and serving meals, for example. This allows us to cut our labour costs, and of course it’s good for elderly people to be as active as possible.”

Only a quarter of Victoria Place’s residents are fit enough to do any work. Another quarter are bedridden, and half are suffering from dementia, incapable of sustained concentration. Maisie and 15 others work a rota, which often has to be revised due to illness. “I suppose it’s all right,” said Maisie. “I’m not overjoyed at having to work again at my age, but as long as I can sit down every 15 minutes or so I can cope. I don’t have much option, do I?”

A spokesman for Berkshire Social Services said he doubted the legality of requiring care home residents to work, but they could not afford to pay higher fees. Melvin Cottle, director of the charity Protect the Elderly, said he was outraged at the introduction of workfare for pensioners. “Government has to deal with this iniquity,” he said, “money has to be found to enable all care home residents to live in dignity.”

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In a senior citizen’s bungalow in Bracknell, Tim Hall is reading Christabel’s report in The Mail. His wife Beryl is making the midday meal, the only cooked meal of the day.

Tim began feeling a little shaky. “Good Lord, Beryl,” he said. “They’re making them work down at Victoria Place, to save on staff wages. What on earth are we coming to? People who work until they are 65 or 70, surely they deserve some peace and enjoyment then?” Beryl switched on the low-energy steamer and came into the living room. “It wouldn’t make much difference to me,” she said, “everywhere apart from care homes, women who can walk always have work to do, unless they are filthy rich, and there are a lot fewer of them these days.”

Reluctant to pursue this line of argument, Tim said “I expect you’re right, dear,” and returned to the newspaper, which he read avidly. It had fewer pages than in the old days, much less advertising, and he had to collect it from the newsagent at the railway station. Most freight went by rail, because fuel for lorries was so scarce and expensive. He was always careful to walk in daylight, which meant that in winter the newsagent had sometimes sold out by the time he arrived, but ever since the majority of streetlights had remained unlit, to save energy, he had not felt safe, an old man walking on his own. The forests of surveillance cameras that had festooned the nation in the years after the millennium were not much use in the pitch black, and the cameras watching over lighted areas were often vandalised, repaired, and then damaged again.

Background information

Meet the Halls, my mythical family:  Rob Hall, born on January 2nd 1970; his wife Janie (February 25th 1972); their children Emily (March 5th 2002) and Joshua (May 4th 1999). Rob’s parents are Tim (November 12th 1937) and Beryl (April 20th 1940). Janie’s parents are Shirley (April 22nd 1946) and Bill Priest (October 17th 1944).

The names and characters in this and other posts in the ‘Tales for the 21st Century’ series are entirely fictional.