Heinz Wolff’s latest and most ambitious experiment might just solve the problem of care for the elderly
Heinz Wolff has been offered Maidenhead by the government as the laboratory for his next and boldest experiment, but it is not enough. ‘They should give me the Isle of Wight,’ he cries, domed cranium pulsing beneath his Branestawm specs. ‘All of it. It’s perfect for my purposes.’
As seasoned film audiences know, when a scientist starts making territorial demands in a strong German accent, it’s generally time to confiscate his Bunsen burners.
But at the age of 82, Emeritus Professor Wolff — the father of bio-engineering, the beaming genius of television’s The Great Egg Race — is through with science. It is now, he announces from his office in the Heinz Wolff building of Brunel University, ‘irrelevant’. ‘It has taken us as far as it can. Our biggest problems have no technological solution. We have come through the industrial age, the information age. Now we need to prepare ourselves for what I call the human engineering age and address the relationships which enable societies to work.’
The professor has turned his remarkable brain to a still largely unexplored field of study, old age. He wants a revolution in the way society looks after its elders, those who find it hard to shop, cook or clean for themselves. Their numbers are increasing, at just the time when the number of volunteers — good neighbours happy to take grandpa to bingo or nip out for his groceries — is falling.
‘So who is going to get breakfast for the old and infirm?’ he says. ‘The state can’t do this: everyone wants breakfast at the same time, remember. Who is going to help the elderly man down the road replace his canary when it dies? I am not talking about insulin injections or medical care, that is for the NHS, but about comfort care, the little things which make an independent life just about possible.’
Currently it all depends on an unsung tribe of six million part-time carers, but he is clearly right in saying we will need around half as many again in 20 years’ time. At the moment in Britain, there are 1.4 million people aged 85 and over. In 2031, there are expected to be 2.5 million. ‘Who will look after them? How can we increase the number of those helping people, while putting them under a sort of obligation so they are manageable? There is no money to pay them but we need to give volunteers a real incentive.’
Wolff’s scheme is strikingly simple. He has devised a system in which every hour you spend getting old Mrs Bloggs her breakfast will be given a value in care credits and stashed in a care account. Then when you need help in your dotage, you can ‘buy’ it yourself with the credits accumulated.
Care4care, as he calls it, is really a kind of insurance scheme, but it can also be seen as a soft currency, administered neither by the government nor by the banks. Both, snorts Wolff, are discredited. He is keen on roping in the Co-op, or possibly a telecommunications giant, as a partner, for a reliable data collection system is needed to keep track of all the credits ‘earned’ and ‘spent’. Those who signed up as scheme members might be issued with swipe cards. But the technology would be kept to a minimum, because the system needs to be easy to understand and cheap to administer. He expects a lot of interest from current informal carers, a third of whom are themselves over 65.
‘If we got the administrative support, we could start it up tomorrow, just by giving everyone over the age of 80, say, 3,000 points to “spend” on help. Just like quantitative easing. You simply create it out of the blue and it’s all fine until the music stops.’
Whoa. Even before the music starts, the questions buzz. What about all those who can’t accumulate points because they are themselves ill or frail? What is an acceptable rate of exchange: an hour of wheeling granny round Harrods to cheer her up is surely worth less than an hour of wiping bottoms?
And what about the philosophical posers: are we going to encourage daughters and wives, for most informal care is still given by women, to start totting up all they’ve done? Where do love, duty and kindness fit in? Will the ties that bind be replaced by beady-eyed accountancy? And what if coming generations simply refuse to recognise the credits so laboriously accumulated? In short, maybe the professor should read King Lear.
‘Well, we expect resistance,’ he says mildly. ‘The state cannot be involved, because if it is, then people will immediately suspect this is a fig leaf for withdrawal of services. My scheme has to be something in which people see an advantage for themselves, something which springs up in response to an absence of government.’
The state, nonetheless, is keenly interested. The Cabinet Office, whose civil servants are currently sponsoring various Big Society initiatives in number of local authorities — including Maidenhead and Windsor — were on the train to Brunel within 24 hours of learning of his wheeze.
Wolff and a colleague told the mandarins it was no good appealing to the public’s altruism. ‘We must really frighten people.’ Did the suits like that? ‘Not so much.’
He is now assembling a brains trust to design the system. When a corporate partner has been found, he is prepared to put his own money into a pilot scheme. ‘I realised applying for grants is much harder than understanding the stock market, so I have been funding research by trading in shares for a while,’ he says.
True, not all his research is wholly serious, including an intriguing tubular construction on his windowsill. ‘It’s a Hadron Collider, only it fires mince pies instead of protons,’ he says. ‘And unlike the Hadron Collider, it hasn’t broken down yet.’
Outside his office is a poster showing him balancing like a newly fledged owl on a child’s scooter with a walking frame attached. ‘I received the Duke of Edinburgh on that, when he came to Brunel. We timed the building’s automatic doors so they opened just in time for me. Else I would have gone through the glass and left a hole, as in Tom and Jerry.’
He exudes merriment, sobering up only when asked who will look after him when the time comes. His heart is dodgy, as is his hip, and his various electronic implants won’t power him through the day forever. ‘I have discussed this with my wife, Joan. When life becomes too hard, we will simply go together, at a time of our own choosing. I know how.’
I look dismayed. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not imminent,’ he adds. ‘I have much to do first.’ Today, Maidenhead and the Isle of Wight: tomorrow, the revolution.