Sir – We applaud Keith Mitchell’s honesty and compassion in recognising that our social care system is “just about bust”. His job was not made easier by a 25 per cent cut in the county’s budget for adult social care by 2015, driven by a draconian public spending settlement.

The system was in crisis even before the cut. Older and vulnerable people in this country have not been able to rely on enough decent quality care, where and when they needed it.

Meanwhile Oxfordshire struggles to convince the world, and the Treasury, that it has any disadvantages which compare with elsewhere — such as some of our wards which rank amongst the poorest nationally, our villages which are among the worst for access to GPs and Post Offices, and a rapidly ageing population facing a doubling of the +85 population in the next 20 years.

With ageing comes a greater risk of frailties such as dementia. So some 8,000 people in the county have that disease, fewer than half of these have a diagnosis, and these numbers are set to soar.

More care is needed for more people, not the reverse.

Remedies are at hand, but only if we grasp them now, and in partnership.

The Dilnot Commission on funding long-term care points to a realistic sharing of the costs; after 20 years in which social care was “everybody’s relative but nobody’s baby” it is high time to own up to its parentage.

Above all, it is time to make a reality together of the slogan ‘Big Society’. Many of us in community and voluntary groups have been living the words for ages. But the boundary fences between public and voluntary sector are still there.

The continuing problem reported in our newspapers of Delayed Transfers of Care (aka “bed-blocking”) is a classic example of a system seizure which the voluntary sector is well placed to ease, working alongside patients and their carers to help that transition from an acute bed.

Please let us stop mouthing the word ‘partnership’ and start putting it into practice, for the benefit of the many older and vulnerable citizens of Oxfordshire.

Paul Cann, Chief executive, Age UK Oxfordshire