In its short lifetime the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing has made a huge impact on how we think about ageing. Its rigour and insight have reached far and wide to influence policy and practice. As a charity working for older people in the county we feel specially lucky to have this heavyweight agency ‘next door’. Our big challenge at present is to harness the evidence to make the case for change to policy-makers and budget-holders. OIPA’s diverse work ranging from carers, creative arts and assistive technology, to design and demographic change has surely strengthened our advocacy.
Nowhere is this evidence more needed than in the area of isolation and loneliness. After 16 years of working for older people I am quite sure that for many growing older this is the biggest debit in the balance sheet of growing older. As a care home resident in Help the Aged’s ‘My Home Life’ report put it..
“All my life I’ve been needed, as a wife, a mother, a journalist...and we all need to be needed”
So the task for all who care about older people –including older people themselves - is to turn a narrative which could so easily be one about loss into one about gain. To quote Betty again
“ We think that the way to make care home residents feel happy is to smile nicely and give then en suite lavatories...but the way to make people feel happy is to make them feel needed”.
We need a positive story about giving, and about living life to the full. Age UK’s ‘Love Later Life’ is more than a strapline, it is a mission statement. We have been great over the years as an age movement at tackling problems of financial entitlement in pensions or of physical health in challenging ageist health and care practices. We have been very poor at attending to the big things in life, and the reasons why people get up in the morning: enjoying leisure, taking exercise, reading, singing, looking at things, being with people. These are major issues for ageing policy and research, but they are not yet given due attention.
The problem is that people get bored hearing about loneliness. Over the first five years of the Campaign to End Loneliness, the word has been successfully elevated to public and political attention. The evidence-based soundbite that loneliness is as bad for you as 15 cigarettes a day (Holt-Lunstad, J. (2012)) has achieved high levels of awareness. But there is a danger of loneliness fatigue.
‘The Voyage’ is a way of keeping this vital subject alive and urgent. As a singer I came across my friend Bob Chilcott’s very moving Requiem, composed in memory of his niece who died shockingly young and with terrible suddenness. I decided that it was now time to express the ache of being separate, of that painful gap in your connections, through words and music.
So with a little help from our friends we commissioned Bob to compose a work which charts the journey through life as a sea voyage, and which captures the yearning we have for each other through metaphor and lyrics, and through music which constantly evokes the movement of waves. 9 choral movements punctuated by instrumental soliloquies, to be performed by young singers and players, and by older singers, from local schools and communities. It’s a lovely piece.
Of course, the metaphor of a voyage chimes exactly with what one of the leading academics in the field Jenny de Jong Gierveld describes when she talks about when she talks about the convoy. The fleet of assets around you on your journey as you sail through life – family, good health and mobility, occupation, loved one – but a convoy which suffers losses in later life. We picked this metaphor up at the launch of the Campaign to End Loneliness with the report ‘Safeguarding the Convoy: a call to action by the Campaign to End Loneliness’ and it has informed our work ever since (http://www.ageuk.org.uk/publications/ ).
Alongside the premieres we are putting on in Oxford and Reading ‘The Voyage’ is about our work in the community. We currently have some 60 singing groups in the county, but what about those who would love that experience but who cannot access it such as those with breathing difficulties, dementia or a recent stroke. We know from the work of the Sidney de Haan Research Centre that singing groups bring dividends to physical and social well-being. And what about the many who live on their own – some 35,000 older people in Oxfordshire alone – who would like to connect. The Voyage is about all of them too. And about all of us. No-one should have no-one.
Paul Cann, Chief Executive, Age UK Oxfordshire
About the Author:
Paul Cann was appointed Chief Executive of Age UK Oxfordshire in 2000, having previously working as Director of Policy and External Relations at Help the Aged. Paul's research and policy interests include pensioner poverty, loneliness and social exclusion and care issues.
From 2004-07, Paul held a Visiting Fellowship at the Oxford Institute of Ageing and in 2009 became an Associate Fellow of the International Longevity Centre. A founding member of the Campaign, Paul wrote ‘Safeguarding the Convoy: A Call to Action from the Campaign to End Loneliness’. Paul chairs Age UK's Public Policy Panel.
A keen singer and lover of the arts, Paul believes that “the arts” should be at the centre of our lives and public policy; taking part in the arts simulates, connects, fulfils us and makes us happy. The charity’s project Age of Creativity aims to promote and celebrate arts activities of all kinds and their value to older people across the UK and beyond.
Opinions of the blogger is their own and not endorsed by the Institute
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