A weekly programme which focuses on people and the situations which shape their lives.
Reporters: Angela Huth, Jeremy James, John Percival, Trevor Philpott, Desmond Wilcox

This week: The Life Sentence: 2: Margaret
Margaret [text removed] is an attractive fairhaired woman in her thirties; intelligent, quick-witted. She has lived the past seventeen years in an iron lung, ever since she was taken ill with polio as a teenager. Margaret's life sentence has been spent at home-away from hospital and institutional routines. If she had been kept in hospital, like the girl in last week's programme, it would have cost the state £100 a week to maintain her there. Instead her parents, now elderly, work to keep her at home, struggle to look after her. Their only financial help - a few pounds National Assistance. But for Margaret and her parents the real cost must be measured in terms of human effort.