Now here's a subject that grows closer to my heart as each year passes. My mother has gone, my father is close to going, and after that (if I survive him) I'm the next in line. For me, the way that society looks after its old people is rapidly becoming less of a theoretical issue and more of a practical requirement.

This week, the Government will be examining care standards in residential homes for children and the elderly - the way that we as a community take care of those who can depend on no-one else. Perhaps, when we consider the mechanics of the public institutions we set up to do our societal caring, we might see in them a reflection of our society at large.

How do we define our caring, for young or old, physical accommodation or communal cherishing? How can we use the impersonal greyness of governmental machinery to look after those once cared for by an extended family and local neighbourhood. As society cuts family ties are we throwing the care baby out with the bathwater?

I’m not one for seeing the past in rose tinted spectacles, however. Abuse didn’t start with our generation, any more than with Dickens social exposes. We have the Welfare State because the good old days were terrible. It takes a lot of people co-operating in broad-based community action to get together a hospital, and fund high-tech equipment only useful to a few. But like the fire-brigade we all want it there in case we need it.

Public institutions established to cater for what are seen as communal caring responsibilities are central to the debate as to how we perceive our society, and how we deal with the fact that not everyone is as caring and compassionate to those dependent on them as a majority might like.

We get the society we deserve. The abused become abusers. We give example to our children in the way we treat them and our parents, an example we must remember after the twinkling of an eye it takes for power and dependency to change hands.

The Qur’an says: “Show kindness to your parents, whether either or both of them reach old age while they are with you. Never speak to them dismissively, nor scold them, but speak to them with dignity and respect, and lower to them the wing of humility, out of mercy, and say ‘My Lord, have mercy on them, as they cared for me when I was a little child.’”