It has launched a public consultation on reform, creating a unique opportunity for all of us to work out how to fill the black hole in funding for care services and how we want our care to be provided in future.

The consultation is hugely important – because the changes needed are substantial. The sad reality is that our current system cannot be relied on to care for us when we become ill and frail in later life. It was designed a long time ago for a different society – now it is in crisis and it will completely collapse in the future, as the population ages. That's why Gordon Brown has acknowledged care reform is one of the most important challenges facing the country.

All too often, it is after a sudden crisis that people are forced to make decisions about care, either for themselves or for a loved one. Heart-wrenching decisions are made at an incredibly stressful time, often with little or no information about the choices available. And the funding system seems to penalise those who have saved, and to fail those who are most in need.

After many years of Help the Aged banging our head against a brick wall, the Government has woken up to the scale of the challenge and is proposing wholesale reform of the system.

Their vision is that in the future the care system will support us to remain in control of our own lives as we age. Instead of acting as passive recipients of a care package designed by bureaucrats for maximum efficiency, we will each be equipped with the information and support we need to design our own care packages tailored to our individual circumstances. This is absolutely the right way to go.

However, delivering on this vision won't be easy. At the heart of the Government's approach to social care is the idea of individual empowerment – putting us in control of our own care, giving us new rights to decent standards of care, but also asking us to shoulder
the responsibilities that come with these – including making financial provision for the cost of care.

Yet this is the very Government that has failed to fully embrace the idea of older people as equal citizens, with equal rights – by failing to put an end to the age discrimination which lies at the heart of all that is wrong with our current care system.

On the one hand the Government says it wants to empower older people – by both consulting them and by acknowledging that they should be in charge of their own care. On the other hand, it continues to tolerate them being treated as second-class citizens.

And it isn't just older people who've noticed. Recent Help the Aged research showed that two thirds of all adults think the Government doesn't take older people seriously. Our shoddy social care services and the failure to protect dignity in health care are the products of a society riddled with ageism.

Only last year, the Department of Health itself acknowledged deep-rooted negative attitudes and behaviour towards older people, at the heart of failure to provide decent services. Ageism manifests itself in the judgments of clinicians who see only an age and not an individual.

The Government is absolutely right to focus on social care reform. But its whole approach will fail unless it first tackles the rotten core of age discrimination which underlies our failing system. As it stands at the moment, it is perfectly legal for older people to be denied access to the marketplace, insurance and banking facilities – even medical treatment because they are deemed "too old". When you spell it out, it's no wonder three out of five adults are worried about how they'll be treated at 65.

Legislation is the first step in setting an appropriate standard for behaviour – it's the foundation of change in cultural attitudes.

Older people are relying on the Government to take a stand against ageism, because only then will society as a whole follow.

It's imperative that the forthcoming Equality Bill includes a complete ban on age discrimination outside the workplace – including health and social care services. Not least because three-quarters of the electorate think it should.

If the Government wants to show the electorate that it's taking a lead on the big issues of the day, then it must deal with social care reform, but it must do so in the context of a society in which your age is just a number.


Kate Joplin is head of public affairs at Help the Aged.