NHS Funding and Women's Pensions

My husband has just been admitted into a private nursing home after a long period on an old-age psychiatry hospital ward.  He is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease which started eight years back when he was still working.

 

He no longer qualifies for NHS continuing care after completion of the Threshold Tool Assessment Form, which in my opinion is slanted almost entirely at acute physical care and takes insufficient account of mental health needs.  In truth, had I been asked to complete the cleverly-designed objective-question form I should have ticked the same boxes as the hospital staff.  I commented that they should pay the sociologist who designed it double their fee for ingenuity because, as a result of its construction, you'd virtually have to be almost cold on a morgue slab to qualify.  Oddly, I believe that there are 28 differently-constructed Threshold Tool Assessment Forms throughout Britain.  Why is that?

 

My contention is that my husband has a disease of his brain which was diagnosed initially as early onset dementia and whether or not he is cared for in a hospital or a nursing home the responsibility for funding should be that of the organisation who relieved us of our national insurance contributions.  Were the disease in another part of his body, as with cancer, all treatment and care would be provided free by the NHS who took a small fortune from us during both our working lives.

 

The second point I would raise, and one with which you also have issue, is the unfair treatment of women during their working and childrearing years in regard to pensions.  When I was a young mother women's lives had to revolve around the family.  It was the status quo that you stayed at home with your children, whether or not you agreed, for you didn't have an option if you'd a macho husband, as I had at the time.  Regardless of the struggle to make ends meet on the one wage, the majority of working-class men believed that if their wives went to work it was a slight to their manhood that they were an insufficient provider.

 

When you returned to work, after several years of not being allowed to "stick on a stamp" because you were considered to be not working (ha), it was usually on part-time basis as family commitments were at the head of your priorities - not a career.

 

Men and women were paid unequally for identical work, and when you were finally allowed to join occupational pension schemes your future pension was naturally going to fall far short of the men's.  Indeed, as a part-timer you weren't even allowed to join the schemes at all so that you had to increase your hours in order to participate.

 

My final point is this:  Social Services must rub their hands in sheer glee when it's a man who has to go into a nursing home as it's the women who usually have precious little to pilfer.  In my case they are relieving us of ?802 per calendar month of my husband's pensions towards his care, leaving me with a severely diminished lifestyle. 

 

This means-tested robbery (which is happening to thousands of senior citizens) is a great leveller of living standards.  Mine will now fall far short of the lifestyle we were aiming for in our senior years.  Unfortunately I'm much younger than most women whose husbands are in this position.  At my age I expect without question that I should be able to pay for Broadband, run a car, take a continental holiday, stick to my usual brand of toiletries, ad infinitum.  Indeed, there will be people who are twenty years older than me who expect the same:  and why not, when a large proportion of British citizens expect the same facilities without actually subscribing to the work ethic?  With hindsight I now wonder why on earth we pumped money into AVCs for his pension, and not mine.  Little did we know that the true purpose was for us to hand it all back on a plate.

 

After I'd been into the bank in a nearby town to set up direct debits and transfer money, in readiness for the first bill from the nursing home, I stepped out into the daylight to observe one of many small groups of human dross, all of whom are clearly not in gainful employment because you see them there at any time of the day.  Three of them who were typical, in their sad statements of personal identity, were sporting bottle-green and magenta Mohican haircuts, ugly tattoos, and the hugest number of curtain rings in their faces, eyebrows, lips and earlobes that I have ever witnessed.  They must have had 50 apiece.  In one hand of each guy was surgically grafted a Carlsberg Special and in the other a fag.  At their heels was a sight to thrill those who advocate hunting - a whole team of Jack Russells, Lurchers and Border Lakelands that need feeding at someone's expense - preferably not their owners'.  And who is funding this lot I ask?  Thee and me, presumably.  To say I dearly wished them early-onset gangrene is an understatement.

 

As I walked away I knew exactly where we'd gone wrong.  Had we followed their creed I wouldn't be having to cough up a single penny now.  Trouble is:  it's too late.

 

Last year, after my husband's assessment, I wrote a document which I sent to the PM and other government ministers, as well as to all manner of organisations that might take notice but, of course, a solo campaign is a mere drop in the ocean. 

Margaret Dickinson March 2005