Britain needs to learn from Asians on elderly care: Minister

Britain must learn from immigrant families from Asia about taking care of their elderly relatives, a senior minister has said warning that people in the UK have lost a sense of a responsibility to look after their families to the end.
"Our society has often left too many people who are the responsibility of the public services on their own in later life, even though they have family alive and other people you would have thought would care," Justice Minister Simon Hughes said.
"We have gone through a period where the sense of a wider family responsibility has been much less important than it has in the past."

He warned that people in the UK had lost a sense of "obligation" to care for loved ones and should look to "immigrant cultures" which understand the importance of "sacrifices" and a responsibility to "look after your family to the end".
In an interview with the 'The Daily Telegraph', the Liberal Democrat MP said: "I think we need to learn better the lessons of many other cultures and communities, of which the Asian and African communities are noticeable.
"They understand the obligation to look after your family to the end. If we had a society in which we collectively take responsibility for our families I think we would see fewer people dependent on the state."

Hughes was speaking ahead of an overhaul of the divorce and family law in the country, to promote out-of-court mediation, which he said would also help foster a sense of "wider family responsibility".

From Tuesday couples who apply to a court to resolve disputes over property or children will be refused unless they have already met a mediator.
The justice system reforms involve the launch of new combined Family Courts in England and Wales.
Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division, said the changes were the biggest in a lifetime.
"Taken as a whole, these reforms amount to a revolution. There has been, indeed there had to be, a fundamental change in the cultures of the family courts. This is truly a cultural revolution," he said.