Why you should love later life
Last year, Lord Filkin chaired a Select Committee in the House of Lords, and produced a report Ready for Ageing? Surveying a range of public services and support used by older people and looking ahead to the future, the headline finding was that we are ‘woefully unprepared’ for an ageing society.
Age UK wouldn’t disagree with this – but we don’t like discussing our ageing of society as a problem. Rather we see it as an opportunity for all of us. Unlike most of our ancestors, we have the opportunity to live much longer lives: today’s older generations are often fitter, healthier, better educated and wealthier than any in history. Older people frequently act as glue for their local communities, so long as their basic needs are met. There are challenges to making the most of a longer later life for society and individuals. So what are we doing to address this and harness that potential?
It was to build on this optimistic view of ageing that Age UK launched Love Later Life this spring – the Charity’s new description and approach to ageing. The idea is not to jump from one extreme stereotype of older people to another of bungee-jumping into later life, but to foster a positive attitude to ageing and later life. One aspect of ageing which we’ve been banging on about for ages, is the relatively negative perception of older age, which fosters damaging attitudes to older people and can lead to age discrimination and neglect. If that then feeds into the mind-set of older people, and leads them to feel under-valued and unappreciated, it can create a vicious circle.
Our opinion polling supports this in part. Eight out of ten adults believe negative perceptions of later life must change. Nine out of ten say something needs to be done to help us live better later lives. But notwithstanding this, three-quarters of adults are looking forward to living longer, and half of those over 85 believe that having a positive attitude to ageing is a key to living longer. This is where we want to start the conversation.
It is not only people who are ageing, but society which is rapidly changing. An increasingly diverse society means that traditional ways of doing things will have to adapt. The incredible evolution of communications technologies gives us the opportunity of huge benefits but we must beware of leaving people behind as the world goes digital by default. People are demanding personal budgets to organise their own care and more flexibility in how they spend their pension savings but there needs to be a safety net and quality and readily available advice for those who need it. All these are, at the same time, both a challenge to come to terms with, and an opportunity for being in greater control. A key to a good later life (or indeed a happy life at any age) is to feel that you are in control. Part of the Love Later Life concept is to help people to embrace the positive in these changing circumstances.
Some aspects of ageing society are less under people’s personal control and require intervention. As myageingparent.com epitomises, our ageing society is something which affects us all and not just those of us in later life now. Our Care in Crisis campaign has highlighted real stories from older people and their families struggling to manage without the care services they so desperately need. Age UK wants a care system where people can access the care they need, now and for the future. The growing numbers of people over 80, those most likely to need care, mean action is imperative. While the Care Act (2014) is a step in the right direction, there is much more that needs to change to help people on the ground, care recipients and carers, to stay independent in their own homes for longer and to access quality care and support when they need it. This requires a whole systems approach and better partnership working between organisations and an older people.
A pattern of involving people, rather than simply existing to deliver a service, has long been part of the Age UK ethos. We want people to join us as volunteers -supporting a befriending service for example. We want people to be campaigners – pressing for social policy changes at a local or national level. We want people to come together to help raise funds which can support our activities. But we anticipate that our role will change and evolve as we move forward, and our intention is that a new, positively minded and active generation of older people will help us to shape that change.
There will always be aspects the community cannot provide for and which the state must supply. Lord Filkin charted many of these eloquently. Our public social services, and indeed the NHS as a whole, is really feeling the strain as our population ages. These are big and complex organisations which are struggling to come to terms with our changing society. But older people themselves are part of the solution – they know best what they want, and what will improve their resilience and boost their enjoyment of later life. Encouraging people to co-design services for themselves and their peers is a key to releasing the potential of older people. The one thing we cannot do is treat them as hopeless dependents, relying on dwindling, overstretched and increasingly shabby services. That is no part of our vision for older people to love later life.
