I've just checked The Post's archive and it seems that it was just over three years ago that I first took to this space with no particular aim in mind to witter away vaguely about caring. Just about one year later I started hammering away weekly and I haven't stopped since. How time flies. Anyway, this edition, if I have got my sums right, will be number 65. In the UK, this is retirement age, so what better time, I thought, to dwell on the elderly.

Now there are two distinct ways in which the elderly are involved in the world of caring. The first is in their capacity as carers. I mentioned in one of my previous articles that the carers' group meetings I infrequently attend are largely frequented by people older than myself. ‘You're too young to be a carer' one chap said to me. At first I thought he was questioning my right to such a title, but then he added ‘you've hardly had your life'. I didn't like to say anything, but I couldn't help feeling I was one of the view people in the room young and fit enough to cope with the physical stresses and demands of being a carer. If I consider the strain on me to be average (and I am aware that it could be a great deal worse) then the muscular strain, pain and fatigue must be a considerably greater drain on someone 30 years older.

On top of this my small sample showed a considerable number of people who were not in the peak of physical condition themselves. Some had been in to hospital for extended periods to have surgery of their own, and thus underwent the stress of sorting out care for their loved one while they were unavailable. Some merely had weak limbs, brittle bones, failing sight and various other maladies which made their own lives more demanding. It isn't easy lifting your spouse of the floor when you are young and reasonably strong, but to do so when you are aging and your muscles and joints aren't what they once were. I know that the theory in this sort of scenario is that you cover your loved one with a blanket and summon paramedics to get them back on their feet. This is, of course, entirely the right course of action but means reconciling yourself to the fact that you can no longer care for them in the way that you used to, or expect yourself to be able to. It is another bar on the volume dial of the voice in your head that says ‘you can't do this forever you know'.

The other reason the elderly are so frequently the centre of issues around caring is because they need care themselves. I've already mentioned those people who develop physical problems more generally developed in old age. A lot of these people who are carers might easily have need of carers of their own. But there are also the people who develop mental health problems in old age. There is, perhaps, none more painful and tragic than senile dementia.

My wife and I have a friend with dementia. He is now, thank god, in a care home. I know care homes get a terrible press and that they aren't generally where people want to stick their loved ones in old age. My wife worked in care homes, and one of the two she worked in was, by her own account, not good. But she has cast her experienced eye over this one and pronounced it good. It is also work noting that our friend does not have close family of his own who could have cared for him at home, and as a result he was living in terrible conditions in his own flat. To see him in a room that has been properly cleaned, with clean bedding, clean clothes and proper food, is a huge relief for us. As a sufferer of mental health problems which greatly limited his grasp on reality, the practical business of caring for him alone benefits from professionals. Managing the confusion, mood swings, delusions and other emotional and mental challenges his condition throws up are also enormously challenging and would, I think, ideally be handled by professionals. I spent a few hours last year with him in my charge and it was, frankly, exhausting. It was a horrible day.

The sorry situation in all of this is, of course, that not everyone has access to good private care, even when they and their carers desperately need it. In the UK this week the news in my area has been full of the blame slinging unpleasantness of a care home that was finally closed down after having been found to be grossly inadequate. Running care for profit cannot be relied upon to produce the right result for people desperately in need of support. For people who have spent a lifetime putting in to the system, the system needs to give everything it can back. They need it.

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