ONCE again, it is the vulnerable who are suffering.

A frail 92-year-old woman who desperately needs proper 24-hour care is denied it - because City of York Council is running out of money.

It is not only the elderly woman herself who is the victim. For the past 30 years she has been cared for by her now elderly daughters.

Now they can no longer cope. One has had to undergo back surgery. Imagine how they must feel.

The city council has offered to fund only two weeks of respite care and has put the elderly woman on a waiting list for full-time care. It has been left to the generosity of private nursing home owner Alice Swaffield to step in and provide a bed where the council has failed.

This is not good enough. Everyone has the right to live out their later years in dignity. Most elderly people would prefer to be cared for by loved ones. But when the time comes that loved ones can no longer provide that care, we need to know it will be provided by the state.

There is no respect for the dignity of old age in applying the principles of the company accountant to cases of real human need such as this.

Through our Care In Crisis campaign, we have consistently highlighted the scandal of elderly patients stuck in hospital beds because the council did not have the funds to provide a nursing home place.

Now we have a case where society has again failed a frail, older person.

It is not only the council's responsibility. We live in a society in which the elderly and their needs are marginalised: and we have a central government which refuses to make sufficient funds available for local authorities to carry out their responsibilities.

The time has surely come for York's MP Hugh Bayley, a government social security minister, to explain why the most vulnerable people in our society are still being failed.