We need humane approach to care

Before we had to travel away from home to find work, people of varying degrees of dependence were cared for locally. Carers were usually the grandparents and mothers, most of whom did not go out to work in those days: they looked after older folk and the youngsters not yet old enough to go to school; and they cared for the handicapped.

As we moved away, we accepted that paying more tax to fund family care back home was necessary. Gradually the churches, with shrinking congregations, could afford to do less and less and government had to undertake most of the responsibility for care. The burden of care is not new, but it has gradually shifted from unpaid individuals to a taxed society. We are living longer and no longer conveniently dying before the onset of the problems that accompany old age; and we are having smaller families so proportionately the burden is increasing.

My family provides a typical example. The young adults live and work far away. Seven of our number of 15 in total need a degree of support that we are too widely dispersed to provide in-house: extreme old age and limited mobility (two), early onset dementia, over-70 dementia, handicapped child, total deafness and child Asperger Syndrome. Two of us sustained disability in the armed forces. The eight healthy members include five children who are several years away from paying taxes. "Fortunately" three do not have long to live and will cease to be a burden on the society in which they paid taxes. So our family balance of dependency to taxpaying will improve soon.

We need a humane, more profound and more widely accepted understanding of dependency and its consequences for society.

Michael Hamilton, Kelso