In five years, the nursing shortage will have worsened.

And for social fringe groups it will have turned into a care catastrophe.

Because for drug addicts, the homeless and other people who run under the label "socially challenging", there are no care places.

Not in the conventional homes, which generally do not want to take them in at all because they disrupt the processes or there is a lack of staff who want to work with them.

And not in the social institutions either.

The employees there are used to dealing with their special clientele.

But they have neither the training nor the equipment to care for them.

Addicts and people living on the streets are not included in care.

You will not be considered.

They didn't have to for a long time, because they didn't grow old anyway: that he died young was a cliché of the heroin-injecting junkie from the nineties.

That's outdated.

Because the drug help has done a good job since the time when dead drug addicts were regularly lying in the Frankfurt Taunusanlage.

Many consumers are integrated into fixed structures, are substituted and are in regular contact with help centers.

But now the addicts from the baby boomer years are increasingly reaching an age when their weakened bodies give way and when they need care.

only where?

Countermeasures could still be taken

If you look around where old and sick addicts are cared for today, you will see heartbreaking scenes and suffering that the addicts and their helpers bear with difficulty.

If the current situation is not dealt with, these dependents will die miserably.

And if these fates become standard, it will be a disaster.

And a failure of the welfare state, which has invested a lot beforehand to ensure that this group of people can lead a dignified life and have access to therapy and health care.

Catastrophe, that sounds so inevitable.

The truth is, however, that effective countermeasures could now be taken.

Special care facilities could now be created.

Existing homes could now set up wards for addicts.

Drug help could now be converted into a multi-professional system and also get new properties where care is possible.

All of these would be solutions that Frankfurt, the state or the federal government could pursue.

Implementation cannot be delayed.

Otherwise the catastrophe is there, albeit with an announcement.