If a society should be judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable, then it is imperative that the level of care for the increasing elderly and disabled populations in the Bradford district is protected.

A new report warns that the care system is close to collapse because of the number of people living longer into old age and the increasing number of people with disabilities reaching adulthood in the district.

This is an issue that too many people have buried their heads in the sand over for too long, and we are now beginning to see what the cost will be for the lack of foresight and preventative action to find a long term solution earlier.

Both of these stresses to the system could have been easily predicted years ago, and local and national authorities should have acted to plan for the impact of the cost of caring for our most vulnerable.

Instead, we are now in a situation Bradford Council’s executive member for adult services describes as desperate.

It seems clear that this is now an issue that needs to be tackled at national level. Extra resources will have to be found, and that will mean in these days of austerity that other areas of public expenditure will suffer.

But in the long term, there obviously needs to be a strategy looking at the whole issue of adult care.

We can’t keep getting to a situation where the money is about to run out.

Instead, we need to look at radically new ways of tackling this whole issue, and find a way that this enormous and ever-increasing bill can be met.

What is clear, though, is that we must find a way to do this that allows vulnerable people affected their dignity and their respect. Otherwise, we will never be able to call ourselves a caring society.