THERE is another aspect to the problem of growing old, of which I hope that Mrs Michelle Pickering is aware (Letters, September 7). It concerns costs.

Our beloved government has put it about, and everyone I have spoken to on the subject believes it, that when an elderly person's savings drop to £10,000, the costs of residential care will be automatically taken care of, leaving money to be passed on to heirs.

This is simply not true. My father went into a residential home with £47,000 in the bank. When he died two years ago he left under £4,000, out of which his funeral had to be paid.

I wrote innumberable letters to the Health Secretary (who did not even have the courtesy to reply), to my then MP Martin Bell, who was very sympathetic but could not actually help, to newspapers, and even to the Prime Minister, who passed my letter on to someone else. I was eventually told that my father had too much money coming in to qualify. He had been, as he thought, provident for his old age by subscribing all his working life to a company pension scheme.

The resulting pension, added to his old age pension and Attendance Allowance, to which he was entitled as a residential care 'inmate,' took his income above the limit for Income Support and I eventually found out that only people receiving it may keep their final £10,000. The Government keep very quiet about that, don't they?

The irony is that if I had not managed after a struggle to get the Attendance Allowance for him, (the residential home did not tell me he could have one until I asked), he would have been entitled to Income Support and his family would have been somewhat better off for his savings.

I think it is dishonest of the Government to pretend to be generous when, in fact, they are stealing from people such as my father.

He would have done better to spend all his money in the pub.

J M GIVEN (Mrs), Gisburn Road, Barnoldswick.

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