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The advent of the proposed Commission for Equality and Human Rights, whatever its shortcomings, will be an historic moment. It will challenge discrimination in all its variety and assert the rights of all people, regardless of age, race, gender, religion, disability, or sexual orientation. But, at least where age discrimination is concerned, it is only the beginning. We stand on the edge of a social revolution in which the voices of older people themselves will be heard ever more loudly.

You could be forgiven for thinking that nothing will ever change. Older people still languish in hospital, residential care and day centres in much the way they have done for the past several decades. Age discrimination, the systematic exclusion of older people from the civilised norms of decency and respect, remains rife. Direct payments, promoting older people’s independence by enabling them to purchase their own services, are scarcely used by local authorities even though they now have a duty to make them available. Even where direct payments are made, the amounts are frequently equivalent to a laughably low level of traditional services.

But complacency about the way older people often have to live their lives must soon become a thing of the past. The government will not have overlooked the fact that they are becoming a force to be reckoned with at the ballot box, much as they already have in the USA. There, one of the most important pressure groups is the American Association of Retired People, a powerful organisation that governments cross at their peril. Here, in only a few years pensioners will outnumber under-16s for the first time and the signs are that the "never had it so good" generation will have much higher expectations and be much more vociferous in support of them than its predecessors.

Speaking at Community Care LIVE last week, health minister Stephen Ladyman called on social care workers to put forward radical ideas for a new vision of adult services. They were told not to be afraid of saying the unthinkable, effectively an invitation to consider rebuilding services from the ground up while putting the older person, their autonomy, dignity and self-respect centre stage. It will have to happen soon or it will not be services that are built, but barricades.