The number of people over seventy living alone is rising in every country with reliable data.
Longer life, smaller families and for work all contribute.
Living alone is not itself a problem and becomes one at a predictable moment.
The moment is usually a fall, an illness or the loss of a driving .
After it, a person can still manage at home with two or three hours of help a week.
Without that help, the same person enters within a year.
Residential care costs a system roughly ten times more.
The economics of home support are therefore obvious and the is not.
Two hours of help must be reliable, and the workers doing it are paid least in the sector.
among home carers is high, and a new face every week defeats the purpose.
Neighbourhood schemes have filled part of the gap in several countries.
A paid organises unpaid neighbours, which works where the is stable.
Every version of this depends on somebody being there next year, which is the part budgets treat as optional.