For weeks now, Government has been flagging its ?social agenda?, which will supposedly redress all of the problems it has been ignoring for the last six years.

It has become something of a mantra for Premier Alex Scott and other Ministers to say, in effect, yes, we know this is a problem, but wait for the ?social agenda? and you will see we are doing something. Last night, Premier Alex Scott was due to start putting some flesh on the very bare bones of the social agenda at the opening speech of the Progressive Labour Party?s annual conference.

If he did, that will be good news, because so far there have been far more words than action. And even when there have been words, it?s mostly been a matter of old policies being dressed up and wheeled out as something new.

Last Friday?s press conference on the elderly was a good example of this. Before the press conference, the media was told that the Premier would be talking about the social agenda. When the media got there, it turned out that Mr. Scott and Health Minister Patrice Minors were going to discuss the elderly and the Ageing report that had been released a day earlier.

For the most part, it was an exercise in damage control, and not a very successful one at that. Mr. Scott and Mrs. Minors said the report showed Government was on the right track. They said it confirmed that having a national centre for seniors was a good thing and that Government?s $17 million plan for a new St. George?s rest home was good too.

There are plans to replicate the St. George?s rest home all over the Island. The report didn?t really say that. It did call for a care information service for seniors and for a caregiver resource centre. The National office for Seniors and Physically Challenged does not appear to fulfil either of these roles now.

What?s worse, most seniors seem to be totally unaware of its existence. Just two percent of seniors under the age of 80 and just one percent of these over 80 say they use it.

Only two percent of either group say they need it. And well over half of each group hadn?t even heard of it. So whatever, the Office is doing, it?s not working. Similarly, the immense amount of money being poured into the St. George?s rest home runs the risk of being a very expensive solution to a problem that may not exist.

More than 80 percent of seniors own their own homes. More than 60 percent want to stay at home even when they need help taking care of their own needs. In this case, they would prefer a caregiver coming in during the day to help them. Just ten percent want to move into a home for seniors if they needed help.

Some elderly people will always need rest home care and there is no doubt that many of the Government rest homes are in dismal shape. But last week?s report raises the question of whether it is wise to spend tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars on new rest homes when the bulk of seniors would prefer to remain in their own homes with better care being directed there.

That issue was not addressed at all while Mr. Scott and Mrs. Minors were patting themselves on their backs.

Given the gulf between words and action on the elderly, it will be interesting to see how much of the ?social agenda? is spin and how much is substance when it is unveiled on Friday.