Old people have never been as quick or energetic as young people, but societies have often valued them for their accumulated skills, knowledge, and wisdom. The ancient Egyptians considered a person to be truly old at age 80, though Ramesses the Great lived to perhaps 90 or 91, and Pepi II may have lived to 98. In a continuous culture that spanned 3000 years it would be quite reasonable to ask someone born 80 years earlier about best practices in art, agriculture, architecture, construction, or technology.

I agree “The bottom line is that at the very least, my generation in their mid 30s need to start preparing for the future.” This is a responsible line. But we need a change in attitude first. I am about to have lessons from a person older and wiser on keeping bees. How would I learn otherwise – the internet? I know we always look at the negative as a Nation, but as my friends grow older I wonder why:

1. Like the younger generations older generations do not have contributions. Let’s celebrate the experience around us as well as the young – get the mix right.

2. Does the public sector kick those over a certain age out of service? The private sector does not do so and provides flexible working. The best workers in retail are those who love their job and are often over 60 years.

3. My over sixty year old friend wants to be the Commissioner for IT/Digital economy in Wales (a job that does not exist).

Back to the point. Given the choice, we know most elders would prefer to continue to live in their own homes.

The major study country I suggest to study is Japan. During the 1950s, the percentage of the population in the sixty-five-and-over group remained steady at around 5%. Throughout subsequent decades, however, that age group expanded, and by 1989 it had grown to 11.6% of the population. It was expected to reach 16.9% by 2000 and almost 25.2% by 2020. Perhaps the most outstanding feature of this trend was the speed with which it was occurring in comparison to trends nations.

In the United States, expansion of the sixty-five-and-over age-group from 7% to 14% took seventy-five years; in Britain or Germany this expansion took forty-five years. The same expansion in Japan was expected to take only twenty-six years.

There are solutions. In the States, most of the large multi-facility care providers are publicly owned and managed as for-profit businesses. There are exceptions one of the largest operator in the US is the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, a not-for-profit organisation.

In Canada, such privately-run for-profit facilities also exist, but they must compete with government-funded public facilities run by each province’s or territory’s Ministry of Health. In these care homes, elderly Canadians pay for their care on a sliding scale based on annual income.

Wales needs good ideas for maintaining relevance and value in old age oh and care homes if we must as a last resort .