By Kamal Sikder
“I have nobody,” Susan told me quietly one afternoon in 2004, her eyes fixed on the window of the small Age Concern centre where I was volunteering as part of an education project. She was 69 years old at the time, tall and slender, with a tired elegance that carried traces of the professional life she once led.
Susan had worked as a secretary for more than fifty years. In another era, she might have been celebrated for her loyalty, precision, and discipline, but instead, she found herself living out her later years in a small room at a residential home, estranged from family and largely forgotten by the world.
I had been assigned to teach elderly residents basic computer skills, how to browse websites, check email, and, most importantly, how to access the growing list of government services moving online. For many of them, this digital literacy was a lifeline: a way to apply for benefits, search for healthcare resources, or simply look up news.
Susan listened attentively during the sessions. One day she asked me how much a small laptop would cost so she could practice outside the centre. There was eagerness in her voice, but beneath it, a note of resignation, perhaps she already knew it would be beyond her modest means.
When I gently probed into her family life, she sighed deeply. “I never thought of getting married,” she confessed. “There was always something that came up. I was focused on my work, and being a career woman, no one really extended their hand to me.”
I asked whether she had any brothers, sisters, nieces, or nephews. Surely, I thought, someone must remain. She explained that she had become estranged from her family long ago. She vaguely recalled a niece but had not seen her in over twenty years. “I don’t even know if she’s alive, or where she is,” she said.
It struck me then that Susan was truly alone. Not just physically, though her room in the care home was bare and lonely, but emotionally and spiritually. Even among other residents, she found little companionship. Many were absorbed in their own routines, often sad, sometimes irritated, seldom open to deeper bonds.
There was a sense of exclusivity too. I was at my desk in the classroom one day when a folded note was passed to me. It was from David, who was about to celebrate his 80th birthday. He had invited only a small circle of friends, and I was fortunate enough to be included. But the note carried a stern warning as well: uninvited guests would not be welcome. “I won’t open the door,” he wrote bluntly, making it clear that the gathering was strictly for his chosen friends.
Susan’s story is not unique. In fact, it reflects a wider and growing reality in Britain: the quiet epidemic of loneliness among the elderly.
Aging in a Changing Britain
In the United Kingdom, moving into a care home is often a conscious choice, though sometimes it is one made under pressure of circumstance. For some, it provides safety, medical support, and companionship that cannot be found at home. But for many, it represents a last resort, an acknowledgment that family support is absent.
Increasingly, the elderly are left vulnerable by an individualistic and materialistic outlook that prioritizes personal success, mobility, and independence over collective responsibility. Children grow up and move away, sometimes to other cities, sometimes to entirely different countries. Busy with careers and nuclear families, they struggle to make time for their aging parents or grandparents.
The statistics tell their own story. According to Age UK (2023), more than 1.4 million older people in Britain report feeling often lonely, and nearly 225,000 frequently go a week without speaking to anyone at all.[1] Loneliness, the charity warns, is as damaging to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Beyond the “Mainstream”: Ethnic Minorities and Elder Care
For a long time, the stereotype in Britain was that while white elderly often ended up in care homes, minority communities, particularly South Asian and African families, looked after their elders at home, guided by cultural and religious values emphasizing family duty.
This picture is changing.
In London boroughs like Tower Hamlets, with its large Bangladeshi population, care homes are now housing increasing numbers of Bangladeshi elders. One such place is Sonali Gardens, a residential care centre where older Bangladeshi men and women spend their final years.
Mrs Begum came to the UK as a young adult from Sylhet. She raised children here, worked in textiles, and has been widowed for some years. She speaks little English now; her mobility is limited due to arthritis, and she relies on buses or taxis to leave her flat.
She spends many days alone. Her children live elsewhere in London or even abroad; visits are rare because of work, distance, or because she sometimes feels they do not understand her ways anymore.
When she first heard about Sonali Gardens Day Centre, she was reluctant, but then, when she went, she found gentle acceptance. The Bengali elders there speak her language, share her food, sing her songs. They remember festivals she grew up with. She likes the way the helpers greet her, offer tea, laugh at jokes in Sylheti, and arrange trips, even walking to the local parks, or a minibus ride to the seaside in summer.
Yet Mrs Begum confides only with trepidation that these joys come intermittently. When she returns home, the flat is quiet, the TV is on for company, and the silence seems heavy. She sometimes wishes for more than the few hours of the day centre, wishes she could have someone to talk to in the evenings, someone to share her stories from the past.
She worries about what will happen when she is no longer able to walk much or cook. She has some savings, but they are meagre. She counts on the state pension and small amounts of benefit. She does not have heirs she can rely on locally, or if she does, she does not feel they are close.
Mr Karim came to London in the 1960s. He worked long hours, did shift work, raised children. Now his children are grown, and many are busy. Some visits happen, but more often by phone. He has a widow’s pension and some savings, but his flat is small, utilities cost more than he likes.
He gets to Sonali Gardens on “Elders’ Day.” That’s the highlight of his week: he meets old friends, chats about politics, about what was happening in Bangla when he was young, hears grandchild stories. The volunteers help him with small tasks, maybe a form here or advice about where to go if he needs help with housing, health, or immigration paperwork.
But he also feels frustrated, there are volunteer helpers who don’t always understand his accent or dialect; sometimes he waits too long for services. He lives with mild hearing loss, and in his flat, there are not many places he can go: the local mosque is far, the shops nearby are closing. He feels the world around him isn’t built for people like him.
He says, “The daycentre gives me company; I come alive there,” but adds, “When I leave, I come back to silence.”
On my daily walk past Mile End Stadium, I often notice a cluster of benches in the adjoining park. They’re usually occupied by elderly men gathered in small groups, some leaning over the large wooden tables as they play cards, others lost in easy chatter. Their conversations rise and fall with laughter, gossip, and the gentle rhythm of shared memories from days long gone. Yet, behind the camaraderie, their eyes often betray something deeper, a quiet frustration, a desperate yearning for the warmth of family company that seems to have slipped away.
A survey of social isolation among minority people 65+ years old living in the UK finds that 40% of Bangladeshis interviewed report ‘often’ feeling lonely.[2]
Elders often cite expectations of family visits, grandchildren, community support, but when those break, there is a profound sense of shame, loss, guilt. No single big quote because many studies are quantitative, but several qualitative studies noted that if elders cannot speak English well, or have mobility issues, they feel cut off from mainstream services, and sometimes from their own children, who live different lives.[3]
When I first learned of this, I was struck by the irony. In traditional Bangladeshi culture, elders are revered, often occupying the head of the household, their advice sought in family decisions. In Islamic teaching too, immense value is placed on caring for parents: the Qur’an repeatedly instructs believers to honour their parents, particularly in old age.
Yet, as generations grow up in Britain, the pressures of modern life collide with cultural expectations. Many adult children work long hours, juggle multiple responsibilities, or simply internalise the Western norm of independence. For some, the decision to place parents in a care home is made reluctantly; for others, it is easier to distance themselves, rationalising that professionals can provide better care.
The result is an uncomfortable truth: the very phenomenon once criticized within the “mainstream” white community is now growing within minority groups.
Cracks Within Families
I recall conversations with colleagues at the Royal London Hospital that revealed just how fractured family structures can become.
One female colleague told me how she was married off at 16, just after her GCSE exams, in the 1990s. Her parents had taken her to Bangladesh and insisted she marry her cousin. She had no voice, no choice. “It was decided for me,” she said.
Her brother, outraged by the coercion, broke completely with the family when he went to university. He never returned home, eventually marrying a white woman and raising his children in the Christian tradition. “I still visit him,” my colleague told me. “He’s my brother after all.” But the rift in their family was permanent.
Another male colleague confided that he had once been involved in drug dealing as a teenager. He narrowly escaped prison because someone else took the blame for him. “I made a promise to God that day,” he said. “I left that path behind.” But he admitted that many of his peers were still trapped in that dangerous trade, their lives derailed.
These stories underline a broader point: no community is immune to dysfunction, estrangement, or moral decline. It is easy to criticize “the mainstream” for what we perceive as a lack of spirituality or family values. But when we look closer, we see the same struggles taking root within our own communities.
The Cultural Dilemma
This raises difficult questions.
Are our cultural and religious traditions strong enough to withstand the pressures of modern life? Or are they being reshaped, sometimes hollowed out, by the very forces of materialism and individualism we once resisted?
Within many Bangladeshi families in Britain, Islamic values are still practiced: respect for elders, emphasis on family, collective living. Yet for a growing number, these traditions are more cultural than spiritual. Some feel disillusioned by rigid interpretations of religion that seem disconnected from real life. Others are caught between generational conflicts, elders clinging to tradition, while younger people pursue independence.
The result is a gradual but undeniable shift: where once it was unthinkable to place parents in a care home, it is now becoming a practical, if uncomfortable, option.
What We Owe Our Elders
Susan’s story haunts me still. She had no one to look after her, no family to visit her, no savings to fall back on. Her life was a stark reminder of how easily one can slip through the cracks of modern society.
But even within families where blood ties remain, emotional neglect is just as damaging. An elderly parent may live in the same house yet feel invisible, unappreciated, or burdensome.
We must ask ourselves: What do we owe our elders?
Beyond legal or financial obligations, there is a moral and spiritual duty to honour the people who raised us, worked tirelessly to provide for us, and carried wisdom earned over decades. In every culture and faith tradition, caring for parents in their old age is considered a virtue. To abandon them, whether in a care home or within our own homes, is a betrayal not only of them but of our own humanity.
Susan’s soft voice still echoes in my memory: “I have nobody.”
Her loneliness was not just the result of family estrangement but of a society that often overlooks its elders, discarding them once they are no longer “productive.”
As Britain grows older, by 2040, nearly one in four people will be over 65[4], the question of how we care for our elderly is no longer avoidable. It is not only about infrastructure and policy but about values, priorities, and what kind of society we want to be.
The challenge is especially acute for immigrant communities, who once prided themselves on strong family bonds but are now facing the same dilemmas as the wider population.
If we do not act, more Susans will whisper those words in the shadows of care homes across the country. And perhaps one day, we ourselves may find we have nobody too.
[1] Age UK (2023). All the lonely people: Loneliness in later life. Retrieved from: https://www.ageuk.org.uk
[2] Loneliness and Ethnic Minority Elders in Great Britain: An Exploratory Study | Request PDF
[3] Loneliness and social isolation of ethnic minority/immigrant older adults: a scoping review | Ageing & Society | Cambridge Core
[4] Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2021). Living longer: the UK’s changing population structure.
