EVERYBODY has a right to be treated with respect and dignity in old age but good quality care comes at a cost.

After years of dire warnings we are now mired in a care crisis and the problem is expected to get even worse.

It emerged this week that scores of private care firms are cancelling contracts with councils, saying they cannot deliver services for the amount they are being paid. It is easy to see why.

The UK Home Care Association says the minimum needed to finance the costs of a care worker visiting people in their homes to allow them to live independently is almost £17 an hour, yet the average paid by councils is less than £15. Numbers like that explain why operators are bailing out of deals that no longer offer them an opportunity to turn a profit.

Over the past 40 years there has been a seismic shift in the provision of care. In 1979, 64 per cent of residential and nursing home beds were provided by local authorities or the NHS; by 2012 it was 6 per cent. In the case of home-based care, 95 per cent was directly provided by local authorities as late as 1993; by 2012 it was just 11 per cent.

This was accompanied by a growing role for large companies with chains of homes at the expense of small, family-run businesses. Privatisation was not in itself a bad thing. Many private firms run excellent homes, but some of the big providers are founded on investment models designed to maximise short-term returns. When the numbers don’t add up they exit the sector in search of other places to put their money.

There’s no doubt that social care needs better funding and who pays for it is one of the burning questions of our age.

But a less explored topic is why have the lives of some of our most vulnerable citizens been left in the hands of businesses founded on high-risk financial models?