Improving the Lives of Excluded Older People Working Group
Notes and Actions
11.00 – 1.00 pm 29th July 2015 Caxton House
Attendees:
John Wilson (Charity Support Services)
Julia Barrand (RNIB) (by telephone)
Oliver Standing (Adfam)
Jen Ireland (Complete Community Care)
Anthony Smith (Age UK)
Madeline Cooper-Ueki (NDTi)
Sam Holmes (Link Line Support Services)
Marie Harris (Beta Futures)
Jessica Stone (Triangle Care)
Kirsty Woodard (Ageing Without Children)
Amber Saxton (DWP)
Simon Wilkinson (Alliance secretariat team)
Apologies:
Bridgit Sam Bailey (NPC)
Sue Arthur (Independent Age)
Mashud Haque (Future Years)
Helena Titheridge (UCL)
Item / Content1 / Welcome and introductions – John Wilson
John welcomed everyone to the meeting, and advised that the group is interested in working together to make life better for older people and address exclusion.
2 / Age Action Alliance update – Simon Wilkinson
Membership of the Alliance has been increasing steadily and has now topped 800, with over 5000 Twitter followers.
Members are from a variety of backgrounds, and recent joiners include Ageing Without Children, Marks & Spencer Archive, York LGBT Forum and the University of Lincoln.
In may the Alliance published a Progress Report, which provides a good summary of activity to date, and thoughts as to where the Alliance might go in the future:
Simon discussed the work of some of the other Working group, including the Money Matters group which is currently looking at the issue of scams and is planning to host a Pension Credit Workshop with the ultimate aim of increasing take-up.
3 / Adfam Older Carer’s Project – Oliver Standing
Adfam is the national organisation working to improve the lives of families affected by drugs and alcohol. We do this through direct work with families, providing support materials and training to families and professionals, informing policy and campaigning locally and nationally for improved family support services.
Adfam’s Older Carers Project works with people aged 55+, living in London, who are affected by someone else’s drug, medication or alcohol use. We hold a monthly peer support group so that older people affected by these issues can help and support each other. Some of these older carers will then go on to receive training to be able to carry out vital befriending work in the community, helping to reduce loneliness and isolation. The project is funded for the next two years, by the City Bridge Trust. You can read more about the project online here- please do get in touch with Oliver if you would like to know more.
4 / Ageing Without Children – Kirsty Woodard
Kirsty explained the origins of Ageing Without Children and her current focus through a powerpoint presentation which can be viewed here
5 / Update from members
Sam Holmes – Linkline
Link Line is a community wellbeing support service, part of the community development organisation, Chapel St. We deliver emotional and practical wellbeing support to vulnerable adults whose independence and quality of life are at risk, to make life worth living. We have developed a hybrid model of free emotional support from volunteers plus paid-for practical support from fellow members of the community (many of whom are socially-excluded themselves). This paid-for support is charged at £12 per hour, which is under the market rate and affordable to people on low incomes. Working to the Chapel St community-building ethos, we currently run from GP practices and plan to innovate our model to run out of school communities as well.
Madeline Cooper-Ueki - NDTi
NDTi work across groups of people and sectors with the aim of improving inclusion, voice and rights for people at risk of exclusion. Our programme of work on Ageing and Older People is currently focusing on a range of topics, including wellbeing and prevention, social inclusion (or reducing social isolation) and innovating approaches to support available for people in later life. Our work spans development of organisations and their staff, evaluation, research, and policy development.
We aim to co-produce change, hear people’s voice and involve older people as experts in all our work. Some current and recent projects which may be of interest to those in the social exclusion group include: Evaluating Camden’s Ageing Better (Big Lottery Funded) programme, a 6 year programme with a range of health, social care and community interventions to tackle social isolation in a diverse community.
We work for a CCG to understand the preventative impact of community opportunities for older people to remain well, and the role of health, social care and community and natural networks. This project gave real insight into how older people define and seek to maintain their own well-being.
Developing interaction skills of staff working with those with advanced Dementia with a local branch of Alzhiemer’s society, with the aim of ensuring that communication and voice remain a reality for people as dementia progresses.
Anthony Smith - Age UK
Current issues I am working on in relation to exclusion:
- Dementia – an issue of growing importance for all of us who work with older people, especially with regard to making mainstream older people’s services dementia-friendly. My particular involvement is in engaging people with dementia to ensure they have a say in the way our work develops; and ensuring we include the most marginalised groups, such as LGBT and BME older people with dementia.
- Beginning work on bringing the less developed issues of equality and inclusion, primarily transgender/gender identity and religion/belief, up to speed with our more developed equalities work.
- Using celebration and important dates for diverse communities, from Eid and Diwali to LGBT Pride and Black History Month, to engage older people who use our services (proportionally) less. Our diversity calendar is available online, or hard copies from me
RNIB and UK Vision Strategy are working with The Royal College of General Practitioners Clinical Priority for Eye Health Programme to help GP’s and practice staff increase their knowledge and awareness of the particular sight issues facing older people, reduce preventable sight loss amongst ageing patients and provide more effective management of eye conditions. A guide for GPs has been produced along with an ongoing programme of conferences, seminars and webinars for GPs and staff.
Visually Impaired Senior’s Active Learning (VISAL) concluded in December 2014. The project was designed and delivered by the European Blind Union and involved six other European partners including RNIB and Age UK. The final conference was in Bratislava and included talks from two UK VISAL participants who were registered blind and over the age of 80. This was the culmination of a programme of empowerment and civic engagement for older blind and partially sighted people.
Jessica Stone - Triangle Care
Triangle Community Services (part of the Friends of the Elderly charitable group) is a registered charity providing home care, day care and stroke and public health services for older people across England. We aspire to a society where all older people are treated with respect and have the opportunity to live fulfilled lives.
We support older people, especially those in need due to physical or mental frailty, isolation or poverty and we do this by providing high quality caring services, personalised to the needs of the individual and integrated with local communities. Several of our services including London and Essex services also specialise in supporting younger service users who require home care and support through our public health and stroke support programmes.
Triangle has recently invested in a large scale programme of work to further enhance our working practices of personalisation in care. Our personalisation in practice programme has been developed with Helen Sanderson Associates and ensures that the voices of older people are central to all of our work. We are keen to share best practice and learn from likeminded organisations and we welcome the opportunity to build supportive partnerships with others working to improve the lives of older people in this area.
In addition Triangle is currently running a large recruitment campaign across London and the South East. We are actively working to recruit people over 50 and we are following best practice guidance highlighted in reports such as ‘The Missing Million.’ This involves providing key adjustments such as flexible working hours and comprehensive training programmes. Again we welcome the opportunity to build partnerships with charities who can support us in this area of work.
Jen Ireland - Complete Community Care
Complete Community Care are home visitingopticianswho provide free NHS Eye Testsat home if you have trouble getting to the high street on your own. For further information see:
In addition Jen has sent the following message to Working Group members:
It was very apparent in the meeting that the greatest challenge to all parties attending was exposure. We all cater to vulnerable populations (with the majority being older populations), but with limited ability to communicate the availability of these services to said populations, without investing millions in marketing. However, I think that by working together and co-promoting we can better reach these populations. Complete Community Care are happy to promote online the other services of the group via our website and social media. We’re also happy to promote in print to our clients (who these services would benefit or who may be interested) via the folders we leave with each client in their own homes. We would hope that our service would also be of interest to some of the other groups too.
The concept of a directory that can be provided to individuals and carers would be a valuable tool. To fund the directory I think many companies would be happy to be evaluated for the quality of their service and pay an annual fee to appear on the list. They’d also likely be happy to promote the list to their clients/contacts and online.
Bridgit Sam-Bailey - Lewisham Pensioners' Forum
Our European project came to an end last summer, leaving us with a legacy of the Financial Fairs, the second of which will be in October this year. We also acquired a set of Tablets which we have been using for techy tea sessions, and for our Monday project. We became a Registered Charity. We had a highly successful Pensioners Day in September with just under 700 people in attendance. We had a successful inter-generational day involving a group of pensioners linking with a group of students in Hong Kong. Our newly appointed Social Secretary convened a number of visits to places of historical interest for our pensioners. We started a Monday Club whereby our members are able to take part in knit and knatter, where they produce some wonderful items. They also have digital sessions, and there is an art class where the do some beautiful work. Next session we would be adding a book club. We are now preparing for our next Pensioners Day on 30 September.
6 / Excluded Lives Pilot Action Plan:update report & discussion– Sam Holmes
Sam Holmes gave an update of our pilot project on gathering grassroots information about secondary care providers for socially-excluded older people across the shared services 'Tri-borough' of Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham.
These secondary care providers are primarily small businesses or sole traders/carers eg mobile hairdressers, IT consultants, chiropodists, etc, who are experienced in working with socially-excluded older people
Rather than duplicate existing directories, our aim is tofacilitate the acquisition of raw informationabout secondary service providers using the method of a campaign to ask people already working in the health and social care sphere (statutory, community, third sector, etc) to suggest secondary care providers.
This campaign idea relies on everyone seeing the overall benefit ofsharing knowledgethat currently resides in our heads or individual contact lists - and those of our wider teams who are working in the community. We all have our own contacts but often find we need even more, as demand grows.
We have refined the proposition of our initiative to be a 'campaign to discover grassroots information about small business/sole traders who work to improve the wellbeing of socially-excluded older people'. Once collated, we will make this information available to reputable, known organisations, who will use the information in accordance with their own safeguarding and data protection policies and processes eg obtaining references and DBS checks for traders.
The campaign will work as follows:
1. Your organisation emails your mailing list (employees, associates, even end-users) to ask them if they can suggest a trader/carer who offers particular services eg hairdressing.
2.People who know of a trader in the given secondary care categories will enter their details on the landing page created and handled by EAC at
3. Once sufficient number of details have been entered eg 100, this information will be offered to known organisations for them to use as they see fit.
4. The campaign continues and the information bank about secondary care providers grows.
Your thoughts on any way we can make this initiative more effective would be much appreciated. Please click on the above link to the landing page and let us know if you have any ideas for improvement on this also.
The next steps will be to email the campaign to a wide range of organisations working with older people across the Tri-borough, to ask them to disseminate the campaign.
7 / Date of next meeting: Simon to discuss with John, and liaise with Jayne (for a venue), and write out to group members.
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