Category: Older People

Productive healthy ageing: interventions for quality of life

Public Health England, March 2019
This document lists interventions that can be made by pharmacy teams, to help older people to lead more independent lives and improve their health.
The document includes interventions based around:

  • preventing falls
  • dementia
  • physical inactivity
  • social isolation, and loneliness
  • malnutrition

In addition to pharmacy teams, the guidance can be consulted by pharmaceutical and medical committees, local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and local NHS England teams.
Click here to view the document.

The State of Ageing in 2019

Centre for Ageing Better, March 2019
This report uses publicly available data to give a snapshot of what life is like for people aged 65 and older today. It then investigates the prospects for people currently in their 50s and 60s with regards to work, finances, health, housing and community support.  It looks at the implications of an increasingly ageing society for the individual, government, business and wider society.
Click here to view the full report.

The next generation: how intergenerational interaction improves life chances of children and young people

United for All Ages, January 2019
This report looks at how intergenerational interaction can have benefits for children and young people who currently face a growing crisis of confidence, loneliness and anxiety, often fearful about the future, fragmented families, segregated by age, with cuts in services and financial support.  The report finds that interaction between older and younger people can help address these issues – starting at an early age with nurseries and care homes linking, through schools, colleges and universities, to mentoring and community projects.

Click here to view the full report.

Promoting independence through intermediate care: A quick guide for staff delivering intermediate care services

Social Care Institute for Excellence, December 2018
Intermediate care involves working closely with people to agree what intensive support they need to improve their independence.  This quick guide from the Social Care Institute for Excellence outlines how intermediate care functions.
Click here to view the guide.

Help at home: Use of assistive technology for older people

National Institute for Health Research, December 2018
This review presents a selection of recent research on assistive technology for older people funded by The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and other government funders. This has been selected with help from an expert steering group. In this review we focus on research around the use of technology in the home, remote monitoring systems and designing better environments for older people.
Click here to view the full report.

UK care home providers for older people: advice on consumer law: Helping care homes comply with their consumer law obligations

Competition and Markets Authority, November 2018
The advice is being published as part of the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) ongoing consumer protection work into residential care homes and nursing homes for older people (over 65s). It follows the CMA’s examination of the sector last year, which found that some residents are at risk of being treated unfairly and recommended urgent action to reform the sector.
Click here to view the full report.

Age is just a number: views among people aged 50 and over in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

Centre for Ageing Better, November 2018
This report analyses the most recent data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).  The data shows that across the whole sample of more than 6,000 people aged 50 and over in England, most are feeling fairly good about ageing, with 60 per cent saying that growing older is a positive experience. However there are large and consistent differences by socioeconomic status.
Click here to view the full report.

An overview of reviews: the effectiveness of interventions to address loneliness at all stages of the life-course

What Works Wellbeing, October 2018
The review sought to address the question: What is the effectiveness of interventions to alleviate loneliness in people of all ages across the lifecourse? The results from controlled study designs in community settings and care homes showed no effect of interventions on loneliness, although this does not mean that loneliness is not alleviated at all by a range of interventions. In the published literature loneliness is seldom reported as a primary outcome; it is most often reported alongside other outcomes including related concepts such as social isolation, social support, social networks, and health outcomes including anxiety and depression.
Click here to view the full report.

Planning And Preparing For Later Life

Centre for Ageing Better, September 2018
Summarises the available evidence on what enables people to plan for their later lives and what factors can present barriers to planning.  It aimed to answer three key questions:

  1. Who does or doesn’t plan for later life in mid-life onwards?
  2. What enables or prevents people from planning for later life?
  3. What can be done to encourage more people to overcome the barriers to planning?

Click here to view the full report.

European report on preventing elder maltreatment

World Health Organization, September 2018
Estimates suggest that at least four million people experience elder maltreatment in any one year in the European region. This report discusses the scale of the problem in more detail, identifies risk factors for maltreatment, describes the latest evidence on the effectiveness of interventions for prevention, and identifies strategies and key policies to reduce its burden.
Click here to view the full report.