Jayne Dowle: If Cameron truly cares about families, he must ease burden on elderly

I’ve loved this house for almost 40 years, and I hope to love it for at least another 40. I’ve already planned how I would adapt the ground-floor, should I one day end up alone and find it impossible to get upstairs.

Of course, my plans for a cosy old age in my own home are as much a fantasy as my dream of somehow winning several hundred thousand pounds and adding a double extension and a veranda on the back.

None of us have any idea what the future holds.

And reading this new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which warns that the cost of elderly care will rocket by £80bn by 2050, well, to paraphrase Pete Townshend, part of me hopes I die before I get too old.

It is unlikely that a millionaire rock star like Mr Townshend, who turned 66 last week, will be fretting about how he is going to fund his dotage.

But it is probably only those with his kind of wealth – estimated at around £40m – who can afford not to worry.

For the rest of us, sorry to depress you, but here’s our prospects: work ‘til you drop, watch your pension and investments whittled away, then trust no-one and take nothing for granted.

I know one couple in their 80s who have been shocked by the costs they suddenly find themselves with.

The other week, the lady found that she can no longer accompany her disabled husband to his frequent hospital appointments in the patient transport ambulance.

“Cuts” was the official explanation. Now she faces a return taxi ride costing more than £10, or a long bus journey, which she could seriously do without.

Then there’s my uncle. He suffered brain damage in an accident and lives in a care home. Not only have the fees eaten away almost all the capital from the sale of his cottage, he now faces a bill of £8-an- hour for a carer to go with him every time he has a medical appointment.

Presumably this carer is allowed in the ambulance. My uncle hasn’t got much left in the world, poor soul, and now he will have even less. He’s only 62. He could have this existence for another 20 years.

It might not sound like a big deal to those in government who make the decisions, but to ordinary families, these kind of costs mean the difference between living and mere survival.

I say “government” in the widest sense. What I’m talking about are recent repercussions of the coalition’s tough-love approach to social care, but the problem of how we provide for the elderly has been with us for years.

We can’t blame David Cameron and Nick Clegg for this one, especially when we learn that this projected £80bn cost is the highest in the developed world. You don’t get into that kind of position overnight. And you don’t solve it by knocking a bit off the ambulance budget here and a bit off the carers’ funding there.

Society is going to have to change. My generation has to realise that “inheritance” doesn’t just mean money. It means inheriting responsibility.

So many families operate on the blithe idea that when the parents die, the house will be sold and the adult children will pay off their own mortgages from the proceeds.

But as we know, if parents fall ill or become infirm, and no-one volunteers to help, the house may have to be sold to cover care home fees, and that inheritance soon evaporates.

I am amazed by the reluctance of families to discuss this kind of thing until it is upon them. But we have to learn to talk about money, to come up with workable solutions and to think, for instance, of several generations of a family living in one house not as an uncomfortable compromise but a sensible option.

Instead of relying on top-down government policies to solve the problem, give families the means to solve it themselves. We need equity release schemes that are clear and transparent, and the Government could revisit its plans to raise the threshold for inheritance tax.

I always thought that Chancellor George Osborne dropped this idea like a hot potato, presumably in the misguided belief that it would look elitist. But with some modest family homes now worth a lot more than the threshold of £325,000, it is clobbering more families than he cares to realise, the very “squeezed middle” already under pressure.

Technically, a family could sell a widowed mother’s house and buy another property where several generations could take care of each other. But the inheritance tax implications are complex and weighted in favour of the Inland Revenue, not the family.

These are just ideas. David Cameron is obsessed with the family. But if he really wants the family to become the bedrock of society, not just now but for future generations, then his government needs to be ready to talk money too.