IT IS a truth pretty much universally acknowledged that people want to live in their own homes as they grow older. And many older people are staying put: 90 per cent of them are living in ordinary mainstream housing. What is less certain is what quality of life we can expect once we are older and less mobile.

The ideal, of course, is for people to be supported to live at home as long as possible, and it is the Government’s avowed aim. But Mervyn Kohler, Help the Aged’s special adviser, believes there’s a way to go and he accuses ministers in the past of taking an “ostrich-like” attitude to the discrepancy between the ideal and the reality.

Research published by the charity last August indicated that 22 per cent of older people find it difficult to get around their own home and struggle with everyday tasks such as bathing and getting up stairs. And with the number of over65s predicted to rise by nearly 60 per cent to more than 15 million in 2031 it’s a future that many face. “If you are an older person who is expecting help from the local authority you have to be really pretty poor and very ill before you are likely to get very much,” Kohler says.

His concerns are echoed by Stephen Burke, the chief executive of Counsel + Care, who says: “There are areas where people in substantial need cannot get help from the local authority. It might be help with shopping, cleaning and repairs, or they might need more personal care, help with getting out of bed in the morning, or with meals. What help you can get depends on where you are living. There are at least half a dozen local authorities that just provide for people with critical needs. That contradicts what the Government says about independence and getting people to live in their own homes.

“The key thing is to offer people somewhere to go for information and advice about the care and support that’s available.”

The need for local advice has been embraced in the North East by the Newcastle Elders Council, an organisation of “older people working for older people”. Vera Boulter, a member who is 79, says: “Everyone wants to go on living independently in their own homes, but there are a number of barriers to that happening. There’s the wait to get aids and adaptations so that people can go on living at home. Some have to wait a long time for adaptations to be made when they come out of hospital or if their needs have changed while they live at home.”

And there’s the question of getting really good advice about what’s out there. “Locally we provide our own booklet on how to get help, which is written from the person’s point of view,” she adds.

Even if you tick the right boxes by providing local advice about what’s on offer it still may not be enough. A difficult component of the problem is older people’s perceptions of their problems. There is a process of realisation that needs to take place for both the older person and their nearest and dearest before their needs can be recognised, even if these appear all too obvious to an outsider.

Poignantly, Help the Aged’s Spotlight report in 2007 featured the plight of Allan Barlow, 82, who has severe arthritis and lives at home with his wife on the edge of a large city. “You do worry about what you are going to do,” he says. “I’ve got a seat lift to get into the bath, but it’s been broken since six or seven weeks before Christmas. I ring up every other day about it, but nothing’s been done yet. I’ve not been able to have a bath since.”

The report also revealed that 7 per cent of over65s in the UK – 739,000 – said that they do not leave their homes more than once a week and that more than one in five is not getting the help he or she needs to leave the house.

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