Smash hit

Professionalism

Care homes and care in the home are both growth enterprises. There will be more and more jobs in this sector in future. It offers career prospects. We need a workforce trained in all the particular skills of caring for the old, and for the very old: not simply nursing care but an attitude of compassion and empathy that promotes friendship and wellbeing. Such work in itself should be rewarding to do, but we need pay structures that tempt people to make this choice.

Accessibility

We don’t want to be out of sight, out of mind. We want to be in touch with at least some of the many things that we have enjoyed throughout our lives. That means being near bus stops and available transport. Being able to reach shops, parks, cinemas, churches, libraries, green fields. The effort it takes to make that possible should be built into volunteer provision and school citizenship education.

Making sure the price is right for care

How do you find a care home for a loved one? Here is some advice on selecting the best, plus a petition to improve standards

• Sign our care homes petition and read the manifesto for change

• Times care homes survey

Care homes: a system in crisis

Care homes will face a new complaints system and tougher inspections. The Times launches a three-part series on the issue

• Who cares?

• Times care homes survey

• Middle-classes to get aid to find suitable care homes for loved ones

Care homes: I don't want to suffer like my husband

Reader Anna Young shares extracts from her journal and offers a moving account of her husband's life in a care home

• Care homes: a system in crisis

• Times care homes survey

Take part in the Times care homes survey

Make your voice heard with our online poll

• Sign our care homes petition and read the manifesto for change

Multimedia

• Times care home petition

Science

There are great strides to be made at all levels of creativity and research in the facilities that can make life easier for us as we grow less mobile, stiff of joints and enfeebled of memory. Art and design can be harnessed to create gadgets that improve life in our homes. We want the best architectural skills of the country to be engaged with new and exciting ways for us to live. Technical wizardry can be recruited to solve our problems as they arise: everything from making public-announcement systems more intelligible to making packaging yield to arthritic fingers. Competitions and prizes — granny awards — could encourage the young to join in. A good bond between the generations.

Respect

We don’t want to be infantilised and patronised by younger generations who know little of the useful lives that we have led. When we are in care we want fewer rules about how we can behave. We want flexibility for our visitors and sympathy for our families. We want the many volunteers and carers who give so much of their time, and save the country so much money, to be consulted about how things could be made better. We want more dementia units in care homes so that we don’t get shunted from place to place as we get frail and forgetful. We want substantially more funding for research into dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. This is the likely future for most of us: so it is merely self-interest to fund it now.

Click here to take part in the Times care home petition. Your information will not be used for anything but the petition. To tell your stories about care homes and leave contact details for us to use, take part in our survey at timesonline.co.uk/carehomessurvey

Times Recommends

• We have kit and leadership. Let’s go
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal
• Conferences — what a waste of money