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Your report (‘It’s nearly magical’: how robotic pets are serving to UK care residence residents, 1 September) made for miserable studying. Some 70% of residents in care properties do certainly have some type of dementia or extreme reminiscence issues. Proof that they are often helped by interplay with robotic canines, cats and seals is combined, to say the least.Rather more vital is creating an surroundings the place employees work in situations that enable them to supply the form of help that may allow residents to achieve their full potential. But grownup social care staff are among the many lowest-paid within the UK. Analysis suggests greater than 1 / 4 of residential care staff reside in, or near, poverty. Abroad migrant labour is more and more widespread in care properties, with use of exploitative sponsorship schemes.Use of £100 robots have to be seen as a symptom of the disaster in care. The way in which ahead have to be choices comparable to increasing schemes that contain inventive staff of all types in supporting care properties, creating robust hyperlinks between properties and the broader neighborhood (partnerships with colleges have been extremely profitable within the US), and increasing the vary of neighbourhood-based organisations in a position to help folks with dementia. Rethinking not simply funding however the kind of properties we wish folks to reside in is an pressing precedence – one the place a nationwide debate is urgently wanted.Chris PhillipsonProfessor emeritus of sociology and social gerontology, College of Manchester Have an opinion on something you’ve learn within the Guardian right now? Please e-mail us your letter and will probably be thought-about for publication in our letters part.
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