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Full marks to the care home and to a determined bird-watching resident. BBC story.

Monday to Thursday this week at 9.00 each evening, Channel 4 is running a series of documentaries under the banner ‘The Trouble with Old People’. Each has its own distinctive take on different aspects of life in later years: the agonising and intensely personal decision that has to be made when elderly relatives are no longer able to live independently; grown-up offspring who are torn between doing their duty and finding their elderly parents a burden; and the elderly on their own, longing to feel part of a family again and willing to be adopted to bridge the generation gap and create life-changing relationships

Monday 27 March: Me and My Mum (Tony Robinson)
Tuesday 28 March: Adopt-a-Grandad
Wednesday 29 March: Adopt-a-Granny
Thursday 30 March: Stairlift to Heaven

This article starts with interesting statistics on the public’s response to a BBC programme on long-term care costs. More evidence that under the divisive English system – which the White Paper failed to tackle – service users and carers play piggy-in-the-middle between health and social care services, to their cost.

Link to Guardian Unlimited story.

BBC report on social services finances. Read more.

Read these thought-provoking statistics on numbers of older people and carers in the province of Malaga. Also has interesting section at the end re Spain’s forthcoming equivalent of FACS. Read more.

Modern medicine is redefining old age and may soon allow people to live regularly beyond the current upper limit of 120 years, experts said on Wednesday. It used to be thought there was some inbuilt limit on lifespan, but a group of scientists meeting at Oxford University for a conference on life extension and enhancement consigned that idea to the dustbin.

Reuters news article

The proposed Pennsylvania Senior Alert System Act is under review in the state House. The measure would require guardians or health care providers to notify authorities of any missing person over age 18 with a condition that leaves him or her confused or dependent on others. Read more.

Cheshire West PCT spokeswoman said the Royal College of Physicians report on the way older people’s services should be provided, and the recent White Paper, ‘had to be taken into consideration before we settle on a preferred option for the long-term use of the new unit which delivers best value for patients and the public purse.’ Local newspaper report.

Cool quick guide to health inequalities. You need to be able to use flash on your computer to use it. Link to Guardian Society website.