Document sans titre
Age Concern and
Help the Aged, the UK’s two leading charities for older people, have come
together to speak with one voice. Influencing public policy is at the hear t
of our mission. In the UK, it is clear that nothing short of radical government-led
change will ensure that all older people are able to live life to the full in
the decades ahead. This report sets out our agenda for action.
Overseas, the challenges
are in some ways even greater. Age Concern and Help the Aged have a mission
to think and act globally. While this repor t focuses mainly on domestic policy
in England, and in the UK, our campaigning will cover international issues too.
Chapter 8 sets out our priorities in this area.
Both charities have proud
campaigning legacies.
Working together, we have
forced politicians to address pensioner pover ty and reform the pension system,
radically changed the public services older people experience, and witnessed
the first steps towards outlawing age discrimination. Over the last two decades
the experience of ageing has improved for many.
In the UK, life expectancy
at 65 has risen, the proportion of pensioners living in poverty has dropped,
waiting times for healthcare have fallen, greater numbers of older people have
a say in the decisions that affect them, and many have had the chance to work
for longer.
But the work is far from
over. Loneliness, depression, poverty and neglect still blight the lives of
millions of older people. Long-term pover ty in the UK remains twice as common
once people reach state pension age.1 Public attitudes to older people are stuck
in the past. The care and suppor t system for older people is on the brink of
collapse. And older people’s experiences of exclusion, isolation and neglect
have been largely ignored. Inequalities remain stark between rich and poor,
healthy and ailing, in-touch and isolated, and distinctions of gender, race
and disability continue to define life chances. Individual human tragedies lie
beneath the statistics, often hidden from view.
So we will work together
with passion and determination to shape our ageing society, representing older
people’s interests at the
heart of power.
As our two organisations
come together, societies are ageing ever more rapidly. By 2025 the number of
people worldwide aged over 60 will exceed 1 billion, and by the 2050s there
will be more people over 60 than children under 14. 2 In the UK, in 2009 the
number of people in the UK aged over 65 will exceed 10 million for the first
time. In 20 years’ time that figure will have risen by half again, and
the number of over-85s will have doubled. Our societies will need to adjust
to having more older people, which has implications ranging from pensions provision
to the design and funding of essential services such as care and
health. But personal adjustments will be just as impor tant: individuals need
to prepare for longer working lives and longer retirement. These are exciting
but precarious times.
The foundations
for how our nation will age in the decades ahead are being laid today. The decisions
we make now will determine whether or not we can face our ageing future with
a sense of optimism and opportunity. We must not underestimate the scale of
the challenge, given the depths of pover ty, isolation and disadvantage that
so many older people face. These are defining moments not just of the ageing
agenda, but of our age. Together we will seize the opportunities before us.
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