A recent study conducted in the UK has shown that there is great strain on UK care homes as well as on the people they serve.  As many as one in eight care homes has been forced to close in the last 10 years.

On top of this, more and more families are being forced to pay for care. The recent report shows that 45 percent of care home placements are funded by families, not the state, which represents a 5 percent increase in the last decade.

The total number of care homes in the UK now stands at 10,980, and at the start of 2010 that figure was 12,592.

With the new government promising to rectify this problem and fix the wider social care problems here in the UK.

Boris Johnson has promised to sort the problem out, stating that he will have a ‘cast-iron guarantee’ that social care in the UK will have a long term plan laid out in the next five years.

One major problem for elderly people is financing their social care.  In 1999, a Royal Commission on long term care for the elderly stated that it should be free for all those in need.

However, if we look at the present situation, we can find that over 350,000 pensioners are being forced to sell their homes in order to pay for their care situation.

Population growth statistics are showing us that there are more older people living is society than ever before, thanks to modern health care and improvement to standards of living.

With the number of elderly people living in the UK expected to keep growing. In order to make sure that these people are catered for, the UK government is going to have to start making major changes to the current systems in place for elderly people.