Elderly in the UK

500,000 pay for personal care 150,000 nursing home beds 43,000 people in homes pay for nursing care About 40,000 a year sell their houses to pay bills Nursing homes charge �360 a week on average At-home carers charge about �10 an hour, depending on the local authority One in three women and one in five men will need care in old age

"By the time she went into care, she couldn't even work the microwave, was having difficulty getting her gas fire on, and sometimes didn't know what time of the day it was," says her sister, Lucy Hutchinson.

"She would turn up, on a blazing hot summer's day, dressed in all her winter clothes. She wasn't with it at all."

Because elderly patients in nursing homes are means-tested, Miss Savage, a retired sub-Post Office clerk, first had to dip into her savings to pay for her care.

Last December, her family reluctantly had to put her ex-council house in Plymouth on the market - it sold for just under �44,000. The fact Miss Savage, and not the state, has to foot the bill, still rankles with her relatives.

Miss Savage is now in a home that specialises in providing round-the-clock care for patients with dementia. The weekly bill is �325, or �16,900 a year.

The cost of residential care for the elderly is split into two categories - nursing care, and bed and board.

Under the NHS overhaul, the nursing component - on average, between �70 to �100 a week - will be free. But the government rejected calls to abolish the other care charges.

"The politicians think nursing is just changing bandages," Mrs Hutchinson says. "Yet the staff have to help Ivy dress, remind her to come to the dining room and clean urine off the floor.

"[The government] looks after the people who have never saved a bean in their lives, but people like my sister, who scrimped and saved to buy her own house, are penalised."

Ivy Savage's bills

May 99: �310 for respite care June 99 to Jan 00: �7155 for residential home 10 Jan to 31 July: �9,750 for 24-hour residential care

Under current rules, elderly people with more than �16,000 in assets and savings pay full costs, and those with between �10,000 and �16,000 contribute on a sliding scale.

The new proposal raises the upper asset threshold to �18,000 from April 2001, and allows a three-month gap before the means test takes the value of your house into account.

"The state should look after people like my sister," says Mrs Hutchinson. "She's not getting it for nothing - she never drew a pension in her life, and paid into the NHS from the day it started.

"When Ivy first went into the home, she could still sign the cheques. She said: 'I didn't save all my life, and buy my own house, to pay for this'."