Making Later Life Better

Age NI’s vision for older people envisages more people living independent and healthy lives into older age, a higher quality of care for those who require extra support, and a positive attitude to older people across society.

Here at Age NI, we have a vision of a world where everyone can love later life. It’s an ambitious vision to ensure that Northern Ireland is a great place to age and has shaped what the organisation wants to achieve in the next five years. Age NI is at the forefront of change, enabling people to have a voice and to remain independent, supporting those who need help in our society, and inspiring people to love later life.

Making Later Life Better, Age NI’s strategy 2015-2020, clearly reflects the areas older people have told us, through over 315,000 engagements last year alone, that are crucial to ensure they can love later life. Our priorities are clear – elimination of pensioner poverty; a modern and responsive care system with a focus on prevention, rights, entitlements and fairness; the fair and equal treatment of older citizens; and the full and effective participation of older people in decisions that affect their lives. Our strategy sets out three clear goals:

• Having enough money;

• Staying well and feeling good; and

• Being equal and engaged citizens.

Societal change undoubtedly brings progress but it also brings new pressures. We understand the issues facing people in later life because we hear from the people facing them every day. Challenges like ill-health, poverty, loneliness and age discrimination are preventing people from living a better later life. Simultaneously, older people continue to make an increasingly invaluable contribution to Northern Ireland society. A report from the Commissioner for Older People (COPNI), Appreciating Age, predicts that people in later life will contribute almost £25 billion to the economy over the next 50 years through volunteering, caring, childcare, replacement parenting and working.

Achieving our vision means that influencers and decision-makers must fully understand these apparently contradictory realities and address the individual needs of the diverse range of older people. To achieve this, we believe that continued engagement with older people, particularly those who are traditionally seen as hard to reach such as people living with dementia or people living in institutional care, is regarded as fundamental to improving outcomes for us all as we age.

The care challenge

There are many barriers to loving later life – poverty, discrimination and health and social care (the subject of this report). Our health and social care system is one of the greatest challenges we face at present and represents a significant aspect of Making Later Life Better. We hear daily of the impact that lack of appropriate planning and resource is having on older people in our communities, care homes and hospitals.

Age NI believes that the right policy response to an ageing population must focus on two things. Firstly, we must focus on healthy ageing, prevention, screening and chronic disease self-management, for older people now, and for us all as we age. Secondly, and equally important, we must ensure that there is availability of a variety of quality, person-centred services which promote dignity for those people living with poor mental and physical health.

Unanswered questions remain about the future direction of Transforming Your Care (TYC) and social care services for older people, now and in the future. How will the vision of TYC to have ‘home as the hub of care’ be achieved? How will resources be prioritised to ensure that this vision becomes a reality? How will social care outcomes for older people be improved? Age NI believes that investment must be prioritised in a number of areas such as developing a broad range of preventative services which promote older people’s health and well-being, keeping people healthier for longer; maximising older people’s independence; developing accommodation and care solutions; articulating a vision and strategy which spells out the importance of day care services as part of the framework for social care.

The Dignity Commission in England – a partnership between the NHS, local government and Age UK – highlighted that “undignified care of older people does not happen in a vacuum; it is rooted in the discrimination and neglect evident towards older people in British society”. Older people deserve to be protected from discrimination in health and social care, as their counterparts in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland are.

We welcome the recent OFMDFM announcement to extend age discrimination legislation to provision of goods, facilities and services to people aged 16 and over in the lifetime of this Assembly. Age NI’s attention now turns towards ensuring that robust and comprehensive legislative protections for older people are delivered by the current administration.

Progress through partnership

With a cohort of engaged older people at the heart of our charity in our Consultative Forum, a task force of over 300 volunteers, regional support across 11 networks, and a passionate staff recently accredited with a Silver Award by Investors in People, we have the resource to achieve our vision of a world where everyone can love later life. Charity partners such as Danske Bank substantially support and enable the charity to reach new community and corporate audiences; to source invaluable funding streams; and to develop innovative and collaborative projects that meet the varied needs of the older people.

Partnership enables Age NI to respond to the challenges older people face through invaluable service delivery. Age NI day centres ensure that hundreds of lonely people experience care and companionship every week. The Age NI Advice Service is responding to people in crisis with practical help and support. My Life My Way, an innovative Big Lottery funded project, is giving people with dementia a voice, people who would have been isolated and forgotten. Our Peer Facilitator team is connecting with people who don’t believe that their experiences are worth anything. We make sure everyone knows how important their opinions are.

Leading the way

We’ve said time and time again that we need an end to age discrimination, we need a health and social care system that works and we need to ensure that older people have enough money to live on. We call on our decision-makers and influencers to support us to help more people love later life – that takes resource, legislation, planning and action. A world where everyone can love later life is ambitious. That’s why our Making Later Life Better strategy is ambitious too. We believe it’s how things should be for older people now and in the future. Right now there is a lot of work to do. As a charity, Age NI is already leading the way.

Agenda for Later Life, the Age NI publication which provides a detailed analysis of how public policy is meeting the needs of older people in Northern Ireland, is available for download at www.ageni.org/policy

Age NI impacts 2009-2015

£6M unclaimed benefits
67,449 calls to advice service

3,000 OP voices heard through peer facilitators