Is the way our hospitals treat old people down to underfunding – or organised neglect?

I am leaving London soon, coming to the end of my time as a voluntary hospital visitor working from a chaplaincy in a London teaching hospital. I have been roaming around a variety of wards for the last three years, only one day a week, but in those few hours I have seen quite a lot. The most disturbing things have been the poor quality food, which cannot aid anyone’s recovery, and the neglect of the very old and vulnerable, the patients rather ominously labelled ‘bed blockers’.

On my last visit, the Anglican chaplain was not in the hospital, so instead of attending a morning service with him in the hospital chapel, I went up onto the wards early, at breakfast time. In one ward there is a neighbour of mine, an old man I’ve known for years. At first I didn’t recognise him as he has become so thin. He was asleep and his meal, two large pieces of thick, uncut, unbuttered white toast, lay untouched on a tray near his bed.