Care home? couldn't care less.

Byline: Sue Carroll

MICHAEL Caine has chosen a timely moment to promote his latest film, Is Anybody There? in which he plays pensioner Clarence, a dementia sufferer sent to a care home.

The actor says he took the part because it made him cry and I doubt many will watch his performance without shedding a tear.

There are few subjects more emotive than the care of the elderly but I wonder if his film can possibly move us any more than the drama played out in Coventry last week when frail pensioner Betty Figg was dragged from her daughter's home and forced into council care.

It's been claimed this hideous "granny snatch" was merely down to over-zealous social workers.

Rubbish. That would imply Coventry Community Services had a heart.

Pictures revealed a shocking Stasistyle kidnapping executed by agents of the state - otherwise known as our police force.

When bobbies turn up mob-handed at a suburban home in broad daylight carrying a battering ram you might, reasonably, suspect they're on to something really big.

But no. The house belonged to Rosalind Figg. Her crime? To harbour the 86-year-old mum she'd just released from the living hell of a council care home. One which, incidentally, was costing Betty pounds 500 a week.

I sometimes wonder if OAPs wouldn't be better off in a Travelodge - at least they'd get their tea served in a proper cup, not a nonspill baby mug. And there might even be a modicum of respect for the paying guest.

It was because Rosalind found her mum at Butts Croft House nursing home "sat like a chicken in a battery house with soaking incontinence pads" that she decided drastic action was needed.

Previous requests to 'free' her mum had fallen on deaf ears so she simply packed up Betty's things and took her home - already equipped with a wheelchair ramp, handrails and a bedroom complete with a mattress containing sensors able to detect movement.

In preparation Rosalind gave up her job, organised extra help from a local agency and admits it took a great deal of soul-searching to make the decision.

Many of us, I suspect, would find the spirit willing but the flesh much too weak to cope with such an undertaking. Either you're prepared to carry the burden of guilt and leave a loved one in an institution or you relinquish your freedom to become a carer.

Fuelled by compassion, Rosalind chose the latter. You'd have thought, given how council care homes claim to be financially stretched, this would have been applauded. Instead she's been treated like an enemy of the state while the rest of us are left sickened to learn that dragging a frail pensioner out of her home is now a legitimate way to protect the elderly.

After playing Clarence, Michael Caine says the only care home he'd consider going into is one he owned.

That's because he's glimpsed the misery of being cooped up like a battery hen.

For Betty, it's all there is. Whatever small chance she had of happiness has been stolen by petty-minded, heavy-handed bureaucrats who put procedure above compassion.

People who, God knows, will one day find out themselves what it means to be old, helpless and without a voice.