Reminds me of a job I went to last year. A neighbour who always bought fish and chips for his elderly friend next door, could,nt get an answer from them. When he went round the back and looked through the rear window he could see her collapsed on the floor unresponsive. On our arrival we had to break down the front door to get to her. Going through the main hallway and past the front room, everything about the house looked normal...until. In the back room the patient was lying face down in pure filth and lots of cat sh*t with no heating/fire and only a bare light bulb switched on. Thinking the worst we approached her and felt for a pulse at which she moved! After gently coaxing her round we sat her on her one grotty armchair. She was in a real mess, no obvious injuries but very bad leg ulcers and appalling dirty soiled clothes. Turned out she was an ex midwife with a previous fearsome reputation. She was refusing to attend hospital point blank. A quick search of the house uncovered 17 cats and masses of cat sh*t all over the place apart from the hallway and front room which were immaculate. The neighbour was very distressed at not realising the state she lived in. So I called the out of hours Social Services team (it was nearly midnight). Eventually getting in touch with the on call team leader I relayed my fears and concerns for the lady. To my amazement he said that he was busy and could the neighbour take her in! This was not possible as he was due at work in a few hours time and anyway she was "off legs". I made my concerns known to control and asked for a time scale for a response from the Social Services which was "....sometime tomorrow". We gave the lady all our blankets off our vehicle and wrapped her up and made her a cup of tea, the neighbour secured her front door and we left completing an Incident Report back at station. Sometimes people do slip through the net. As you say...if only she,d gone to hospital then at least she would have been looked after in the short term.