Agewell: It's Time to Update Our Positive Ageing Policies

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By Mike Milstein

Positive ageing policies intended to effectively guide the allocation of resources   for our senior population are due to be reviewed and updated by the Nelson, Marlborough and Tasman Councils this year. To stimulate cutting edge thinking in the policy review process, a gathering of individuals who have given much thought to ways of promoting positive ageing was hosted by the Nelson Council during May, 2008. In the near future members of the community will be encouraged to provide their perspectives about positive ageing and how councils in the top of the South Island can support this important goal.  

For the next four months the Conscious Ageing Corner will be devoted to summarizing interviews by Annie Henry of the Conscious Ageing Network with three New Zealanders and one American who presented their ideas at the gathering. The intent is to share some highlights of the seminar with community members. We begin with five key points provided by Dr. Sally Keeling, Director of the New Zealand Institute for Research on Ageing at Victoria University in Wellington.

First, Dr. Keeling believes that one of the greatest achievements of our time is “the rapid expansion of life expectancy for many, many millions of people in the last 50 to 100 years. It is something we should feel very proud of, but in many ways we aren’t ready to deal with the implications. There is a major discourse that says ‘this is a problem.’ We say ‘it is full of opportunity, but it has some risks and we need to balance them in our understanding.”

Second, she thinks that clear and effective positive ageing policies are important for the top of the South Island because “these communities have lost younger populations and have attracted older populations.” This is compounded by the fact that it is a “semi-rural region. Simple things like shopping, visiting, getting to the library and getting to the doctor are very car dependent, especially as one ages. The ability and wish to drive a car, the economics of rising fuel prices, and the economics of single person households on a dispersed piece of land present challenging issues.”

Third, she emphasized “social connectedness, which is central and fundamental to well being across the life course, but particularly in older age. The overwhelming bias is towards family connectedness, but that doesn’t diminish friends, community and non-kin connectedness. In many cases family are spread about the country or the globe. Can issues about everyday activities like shopping or simple emotional connectedness be affected by the technology of communications? How much do we need to reconfigure how we do these simple things in life?”

Fourth, Dr. Keeling believes that “ageing should not been seen separately, but integral to the life course process. It is a consciousness raising process. How does ageing play out in different domains or fields or practices or regions? What about the ageing population? What about the personal experience of ageing, whatever fields of interest social science researchers are studying?”

Finally, as we proceed with our review of positive ageing policies Dr. Keeling suggests that “we need to defer to the people on the ground. We need to work with the people with whom we live in our communities. This is your place!”

Note: This article, which appeared on February 19, 2009, in The Leader, Nelson, NZ,  summarizes an interview aired by Fresh FM that was conducted by Dr. Annie Henry and sponsored by Age Concern, Nelson. If you want to share your thoughts with the Conscious Ageing Network (CAN) or wish to know when interviews will be aired and when CAN articles will appear in the Leader, send an email to agewell@ihug.co.nz .  

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