State pension plans: Ferrari for Christmas or coal-filled stocking?

by Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications

Everyone can have a Ferarri for Christmas because Santa's going to be more efficient with his elves: this is what we are supposed to believe about the coalition's apparent plans on the state pension. The idea that a higher pension for all can be achieved simply by getting rid of the costs of administering pension credit is, like Santa (look away children), a fantasy. Pension credit may be expensive to administer at around £50 per person, per year, but that amount of saving will barely get you a tank of petrol, let alone a supercar. Clearly the extra money for the superpension has to come from somewhere and until we know where we should avoid the temptation to look for garage space for that Ferrari. Almost as interesting is the question of who gave the story to the Daily Mail last Monday? Lib Dems in an attempt to spread some pre-Christmas cheer (the superpension is the brainchild of LibDem pensions minister Steve Webb)? Or Tories in an attempt to prevent it?

Making sense of 'society', 'Big Society' and the state

by Simon Bottery, director of fundraising, policy, and communications

I hit a raw nerve when I asked Lord Victor Adebowale at a conference Tuesday about David Cameron's view that, 'there is such a thing as society, it's just not the same as the state'. I was expecting him to be sceptical about aspects of the Big Society. I was vainly (both senses of the word) hoping that he might like my joke that, 'there is such a thing as society, it's just not the same as Guardian Society.' So I was surprised that he refused to find any truth whatsoever in Cameron's statement. I may have misunderstood, but he seemed to be saying that in reality there was no point in discussing one without the other.

Can this really be true? If I offer to help my neighbour clear her snow away from her front door, surely that is a good reflection of society. But has it anything to do with the state? Surely not. I may want and expect my local authority to clear snow from the roads and pavements, but am I really expecting thestate to have a role all the way up to my neighbour's front door and ven inside it?

My neighbour regularly collects parcels for me that are delivered when I am out. My family regularly feeds her cat while she is away. There are thousands of acts like this every day, carried out by individuals across the UK, who never expect to be supported by the state, paid or 'capacity built'.

Of course, there are also thousands of voluntary organisations who need support, development and funding. Formal volunteering roles are not free and anyone who thinks they are will be horribly confused if funding and support are withdrawn. But we shouldn't confuse or conflate one with the other.

Big Society: what does it all add up to?

By Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications

I only narrowly passed my Maths GCSE but for some reason I think the Cameron concept of 'Big Society' is best framed as an equation:

Volunteers +Carers x (Third Sector + state - (inefficiency+bureaucracy)) = Big Society.

For the non-mathematicians (including me) this translates as:

Big Society is the combined activities of unpaid volunteers and carers, multiplied by the actions of government and the third sector, minus their inefficiencies and bureaucracy.

I think Cameron would definitely have the equation this way around, with the actions of volunteers and carers coming first and the role of the state and the formal third sector coming second. And I think he would see the main role of the formal third sector (the bit that gets paid to be here) as a multiplier (perhaps magnifier or even facilitator would be a better word) of volunteer and carer activities, rather than as a provider of fully paid-for, contracted services like the corporate sector.

I think he shares the view of much of middle England that there is a lot of inefficiency and bureaucracy in the state sector (and perhaps in the charity sector too. We wouldn’t seriously argue with this, would we? Would we?).

A critical issue might be whether he sees the government 'x' as a big multiplier or a small one. How much positive effect does government really have on the activities of volunteers and carers? Doubling their output? Trebling it? Increasing it by only a small percentage? Is it in fact more of a brake than a boost, detracting from their effort (volunteers + carers x third sector - state = big society).

We hope to do some work on what the Big Society might mean for older people in particular in the coming months and are looking for partners. If you’re interested, let me know.

Whatever happened to aftercare?

Some revealing research on falls and hip fractures was released today, after an annual audit showed that one in five older people with broken hips don’t get surgery quickly enough. Concealed behind these findings was actually some positive news – that standards were improving compared to previous years. But this is of little comfort given that administrative problems and staffing shortages can currently prevent people from receiving the basic care they need, leaving some to endure avoidable disability and/or a loss of independence.

But what really struck us about these findings was the lack of reported aftercare. Ways to prevent more problems arising after a hip fracture are well known, and it makes sense that prevention is better than cure. But the audit highlighted that a third of the people who were treated for hip fractures did not have a falls assessment – essential to organising necessary home modifications and exercise regimes, and a quarter were not assessed to see if they needed drug treatment to strengthen bones. At Independent Age we know how debilitating a fall can be for an older person, having a massive impact on their quality of life. Failure to make the most of treatments and prevention techniques already available, not only puts older people at risk but will undoubtedly cost the NHS more in years to come.

Photo by Wikimedia Commons User:Scuba-limp,used under Creative Commons license

Independent Age speaks out against the Default Retirement Age

Independent Age was quoted in a Department of Work and Pensions Report titled Review of the Retirement Age: Summary of the Stakeholder Evidence. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we do not support the default retirement age, when there are many healthy older people who want to carry on contributing in the workplace.

No one should be forced into retirement because of their date of birth--that's ageism. Our full position is up on our website here, or you can read the full government report here. (It's 61 pages--we're on page 44 and page 58.)

Perverse incentives

by Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications for Independent Age

I have now been to three fringe meetings in two days at the Conservative party conference where speakers talked about 'perverse incentives'. This means accidentally encouraging people to do something other than what you intended and is being discussed in relation to the new Conservative proposal on social care.

Basically, this involves people paying £8000 when they are 65 and in return having the cost of any residential care covered. Since typically most people don't need to go into a care home, and only stay a couple of years on average if they do, the scheme will pay for itself, say the Conservatives. That seems fine, say the critics, but in reality people who pay the guarantee are more likely to expect to need care and will be more likely to go in earlier if they do- after all, they've already 'paid' for it. So the scheme creates a perverse incentive to use a home.

This and other issues like it are bound to be debated for some time, which is great as we do need social care to be high up on the party political agenda. But it does occur to me that currently for many people the incentive, perverse or not, is to stay at home if at all possible. An older person with care needs will not have to sell their home to pay those costs if they are living in it but may have to if they have moved out. Of course that's fine if they do want to stay at home (as most people say they do). But what about those who want to move into a home? The urge to safeguard the family home, perhaps to pass on to children, may create a determination to stay put no matter what the cost to themselves and their welfare.

The potential battle over meals on wheels

by Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications for Independent Age

By coincidence, I heard this week from the chief exec of the organisation that invented meals on wheels and, the next day, from a council that has just scrapped them. WRVS is one of those charities that emerged from government just before the second world war and is now seem as something of a national institution. Its impressive chief executive, Lynne Berry, is busily completing the transformation of the organisation from a vast conglomerate of disparate services to a more focused, directed body. But they still deliver millions of meals on wheels to elderly people each year.

Sue Warr is an (also impressive) manager in Dorset County Council, tackling social exclusion among older people. Dorset has a lot of older people: over 700,000 - well over one quarter of its population (apparently in Christchurch there is a saying that people retire to Christchurch to die and then forget what they came for). Only 189 of them use meals on wheels so the council has a new ‘access to food and nutrition’ project that aims to help more people. Those currently getting meals on wheels will get individual help to identify other ways of getting food and meals.

Dorset clearly takes older people’s issues seriously and Sue described some brilliant work to prevent and deal with social exclusion and loneliness among older people. So Dorset may well be right to think that there are better ways of providing food and nutrition to older people in the county. But I can’t help wondering whether at least some of the 189 people getting meals on wheels were actually very happy with what they were getting and wanted it to continue. It would be reassuring to know that they are happy with the new arrangements. More worryingly, will we see other councils scrapping services such as these to save money, without going to quite the lengths of Dorset to see that the existing service users get a good alternative?

Can we have personalised care in an age of spending cuts?

by Claire Nurden, Research and Policy Officer for Independent Age

I managed to grab myself a seat at one of the most popular fringes at the Liberal Democrat conference relating to older people - “Personalising care: the choices we face”. As a key concept dominating the social care agenda, the subject of personalisation proved popular, with a large number of individuals and organisations flocking in, keen to get involved in the debate.

Concerns about brokerage dominated discussions, with those involved stressing that any right to “choice” must be accompanied by a right not to choose. All agreed that those receiving social care must be given the right amount of support to make the most of the options available to them. The debate also highlighted that any new system will need an increase in funding to ensure the sustainability of a new market place, and to finally make personalisation an effective reality – an interesting prospect given the current political clambering to make spending cuts.

Why desperation can be a great motivator

Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications for Independent Age writes:

I spent a day last week running two discussion groups in Eastbourne for a dozen or so of the older people we work with. We run the groups to have a better understanding of the issues facing older people, partly so that we can design our services to help them and partly so that we can try to influence the policies that affect older people.

The idea is that we run one discussion group in the morning and one in the afternoon, with both groups having lunch together. This means that as well as helping us understand issues, people get something out of it themselves. They usually say that they enjoy the events as an opportunity to meet and talk with other people. Sometimes participants end up swapping telephone numbers with people they’ve got on particularly well with.

The two groups we ran last week were about health and social activities. Most older people will have health conditions affecting their lives to a greater or lesser extent. However three of the participants, two of whom came with their spouses, had suffered sudden dramatic health. These changed their lives virtually overnight. They went from being active people looking forward to their retirement to struggling to even leave their homes. Like thousands of others they had sought out help where they could – from the health service, local authorities, charities, user groups. The described a lack of joined-up action, particularly in the gap between hospital and home care. One described a four-year struggle to get Attendance Allowance. There are no easy solutions in these circumstances but (another benefit of these sorts of groups) one participant could help another – in this case, signposting someone to a pain clinic they did not know existed.
Another participant described her frustration at being refused a disabled parking badge (after 13 years of having one) because East Sussex County Council had instigated new guidelines to crack-down on abuse of the previous system. Because this participant had honestly said she could walk 50 metres unaided (though not without a lot of pain) she could no longer have a badge. Again others in the group were able to suggest solutions – in this case applying via the GP to be classified as registered disabled and receiving a badge through this route.

The afternoon groups talked about social activities. For those who lived alone it was a real difficulty to find enjoyable ways of staying socially active. They feared, and sometimes experienced, days of being by themselves with no one to talk to. They described the cost of social activities like going to theatre as being beyond them (the discounts they receive are too small to make much difference), though they appreciated what they got for free, such as swimming and bus travel. But for many it was not just the cost but the idea of doing things alone that was so daunting (as it would be for someone of any age). I asked one woman what motivated her to get out by herself and go places. “Desperation,” she said. “If I don’t, I might not see anyone at all.”