IF there was ever a service that should not need the advocacy of a trade union to defend it, it is the home care service provided to those whose only other alternative is residential or National Health Service care.

And yet, in one of the biggest economies in the world, that is precisely what UNISON is having to do in order to defend a service that is struggling to survive in the face of continuing cutbacks and, at the same time, increasing demand.

A growing elderly population will, of necessity, present demands on the care services, but those services are being steadily reduced as local authorities struggle to balance their budgets and fall back on restricting home care to cases that are critical or high dependency.

But, as UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis points out, such cutbacks are a false economy when looked at at a national level.

Government estimates that reducing the rate of hospital or care home admissions among older people by just 1 per cent a year would save the country £3.8 billion tell the story clearly.

Thousands of lives could be saved, as could millions of pounds, by simply directing funds toward the home care services and providing services to elderly people that maintain both their dignity and their ability to run their own lives.

Neglect those services and what happens is there for all to see. Elderly people are shunted into private-sector care homes at enormous cost both to government and to the elderly themselves.

Their lives are no longer their own and their right to make their own decisions goes out of the window along with their autonomy and, in many cases, their self-respect.

But the funding of care services is at best a tug-of-war between local councils and central government.

The government insists that anyone with savings of over £21,000, including property, must pay for their own care.

This discourages tens of thousands of people from receiving the support that they need.

And private-sector providers are driving costs ever higher, meaning that councils are stretching their budgets to breaking point.

Even government ministers admit that the system is in a mess. Ivan Lewis, the minister responsible for care services, has acknowledge in a radio interview that the funding issue is desperately in need of overhaul.

But robbing pensioners of their homes to fund care is no way forward.

And neither is passing the buck to council tax payers, or allowing councils to avoid supplying services by tightening the definition of critcal need to debar everyone except the desperately ill from receiving care services.

The government’s own figures show the way forward very clearly indeed, if the government had the will to act on them.

A home care service funded centrally and available to all in need of them would cut back on the government pouring money into privateers’ pockets. It would reduce demand for the enormously expensive residential care by far more than its own cost and, importantly, it would enable elderly people to live their lives with the dignity and the assistance that they have earned.

After a lifetime’s work, it should not be too much to expect that society cares for you as you have cared for it – without stealing your home or subjecting you to a postcode lottery.