Excellent report on the “cost of caring”, and how this can be reduced by preventitive measures, by Newsnight Scotland last night. This was the first in a series of such programmes. I am also looking at this issue in a series of articles: “Scotland’s care industry”. The first two parts can be found in our “Publications” section above.
The programme outlined the many challenges we face. The main issue being the increasing cost of caring for our ageing population. That though is not the only issue. Others include: the quality of our health and social care services, standard of our care homes, who owns and runs these care homes, how we pay for these services and care homes, how do we divide the cost of these services between the individual and the state, how do we improve the health and well-being of our later years and do we need to restructure our health and care services.
There is also a question of perception. This issue is not all all negative. The fact that our population is living longer is a good thing. As part of this debate the positive aspects of this issue need to be publicised. This is also not just a question of money.
The programme is available on the BBC iPlayer.