article_snippet.sent: Poor standards in many care homes and reduced home help could also prompt early deaths, experts say.
article_snippet.sent: Recent governments had failed to invest in care for an ageing population, He said, leaving insufficient help for the frail and vulnerable.
article_snippet.sent: He added: ‘There has been a failure of successive governments in that we should have seen that trends were changing, that more people would be living longer and we needed to put services in place to look after more people.
article_snippet.sent: We are letting down a generation which came back from the war and built the welfare state.
article_snippet.sent: The most likely culprit is the rapid decline of state-funded social care in recent years, which is leaving hundreds of thousands of older people to struggle on alone at home without any help. '
article_snippet.sent: ‘More and more older people are living with several incurable conditions and illnesses.
article_snippet.sent: Determined action now to sustain social care and to support older people with multiple long-term health conditions more effectively can hopefully make this a blip, rather than the start of a terrible trend.