I wonder if any of you have ever had to take the decision that someone close to you needs to go into residential care?

If you have, you will know that it usually involves a lot of thought and often considerable heartache. Are you doing the right thing in advising a move from familiar surroundings?

Will there be the kind of people with whom your friend or relative can possibly make new friends? Will there be caring staff and the kind of attention to personal comfort and mental stimulation you know ought to be part of life as you grow older?

These questions and many more will occupy you for many long discussions before the final decisions are taken. Let me say at once that I know there are many residential homes that more than fulfil the criteria that one would wish to apply when seeking this kind of care.

A large and ageing population in both East and West Sussex requires that there should be a goodly supply of such facilities in a range of price bands. They are not all in the luxury bracket and it is possible that many of them do not have the kind of comforts that would be ideal.

What most of them have is a dedicated staff who genuinely do the best they possibly can for those in their care. Does it then matter that every home has not got a specified amount of space for every inmate? Does it matter that in some of the older premises there are two people sharing a room if they themselves have no reservations about it?

Of course, in an ideal world there would be single rooms all round, with en suite facilities, perhaps a higher staff ratio and more in the way of stimulating entertainment for those who have to spend their declining years among a group of other older people like themselves.

But most of those for whom this has become a way of life would not put luxury at the top of their list of wants or needs. As long as they are reasonably comfortable, what they would want more than anything else is kindness, thoughtfulness and the feeling that they were not just a nuisance that had to be endured until they finally gave up the daily struggle.

Of course the powers that be must ensure that proper standards of hygiene and safety are met and that the old and frail are not being exploited. But, sadly, what seems to be happening now is a determination to set a standard for residential homes that some have no hope of attaining.

The minimum size of a room, no sharing of facilities among other requirements will sound the death knell for a number of happy places, which, by their own admission, are not of Buckingham Palace standards but are home to a number of elderly people who are happy there.

The Argus has reported on a number of unhappy shutdowns recently and now we are told that some 19 more are to close because of not attaining certain standards. There will undoubtedly be more unhappy deaths in the name of improvements. One has to ask if this is really progress.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.