Good morning, welcome to this age-friendly workshop. I'm Andrew
Kikeros I'll be your MC for the day and I'd particularly like to thank our
speakers who've travelled far and wide. Jane from Toronto, Canada, Marlene from
Sydney and even those have driven from UWA, which is on a day in
Perth when it's raining you know what it's like. First of all I'd like to
introduce Barry McGuire to do the welcome to country. Barry is a Balladong
Wadjuk Noongar who is highly regarded as a public speaker facilitator
and negotiator Barry's worked as a consultant and cultural adviser on a
range of strategic projects across the corporate mining and oil and gas sectors
as well as local state and federal government structures so welcome Barry.
Good morning all and thank you Andrew I'd like to acknowledge Miss Jessica Shaw MLA labor
member for Swan Hills and Mr Hollingsworth and to special guests
ladies and gentlemen and especially to our international guests and national
guests. You know when Aboriginal people travelled
in here to this country from far and wide and for us as a Wadjuk people
when we invited somebody say from Northam, just over the hill or
Mandurah or just up in Moora from those three countries was to give them a
Welcome to Country. The welcomes to countries was about helping them to
understand how to be safe inside of this country and to ensure that your spirit
is strong so that you can go home strong enough to your family. Welcomes
to country's was also how do we monitor you to see if we want to have you into
our fold, into our family. Because you know a man would come, or his group
would come and they would stand in a distance and make a fire they'd be
monitored for 24 hours to see whether they had a smile or not.
As simple as that, how do we smile. You see there's many nations on this
this beautiful continent that we share now today and how do we stand as one
with the many programs that are out there running from the organisations and
government is to see how to bring people together, but also to understand their
cultural construct. How do they live as a nation of people, how do you insert that
into those programs, how do we pay obligation to the way that they live.
Simple, which is to go and have a cup of tea and we love our cup of teas.
That's just Aboriginal people. So welcomes the country's are about that how do we
ensure that each other space in life exists together in balance, and where do
we get that knowledge from, how does that exist?
It exists inside of our elders, it exists in side of the people that have been
written from their elders you see there are many books, many books and when my
father was in his last days, he's sitting there and he said my son I've
written seven books and I said yeah dad okay and he and I we got on so well you
know we had our little jokes nearly every every minute of the day and
I said yeah mate, I said listen I need to tell you something before you get
into an explanation of why you written seven books I said I know that you've
born under a little tree in a place called Mount Kogami Birley Valley near
Beverley. I know that you only went to one year of school and know that I had to
help you understand English in the 1980s and I know that when you read the
newspaper you'd look at the picture and then I would explain it what was written
underneath, and you'd say well I was close enough to
that story son. Okay yeah whatever mate I said and he looked at me and he says no
son, every morning you wake up when you look in the mirror you're one of my
books that I have written when you think about the things that you know today
your mother and I have spent our time writing into you how we should be as a
people and so you think about the thousands and thousands of years of that
us as Aboriginal people have been singing and what this lake here actually means to
us. The name Gwelup, the understanding of where and how food was, the balance
within the environment, it's written in our elders. We stand with our people
until their last days and that's a must because we'll never know how to step into
it tomorrow if we don't listen to them
so I'm very honoured to see the many organisations coming here today to look
at how to live with our elders, age you know it's, it's important our elders was
seen life before we have we must keep always...
...we must continue to listen to
them speaking. So from us as a Wadjuk people to the many nations here
today and to our international guests and our national guests. From us as West
Australians....
...and my grandmother's and my grandfather's
who have walked before me come to be with you...
...and for the time that you spend on our country here in the Wajuk lands
of Perth Western Australia may they hold you and keep you safe
and heal you if you are unbalanced...
...later on as you travel home to your
family or to your place of rest...
...may they always continue to walk with you until you get back to your ancestors...
...welcome to the lands of
the Wadjuk people, welcome to our lands that we share here with our West
Australian brothers and sisters of many nations and may you be safe until you
travel home and I'd like to share an old song that would have been sung around
this lake because it belongs to Kings Park and this lake is very important to
Kings Park it's very important to the Wadjuk people or to the Moore River
which is what we call...the hill...which is
down at the Murray and the....which is way out in the Western waters our
heaven where our spirits continue on to to rest. This place is
important and it exists within our elders, how do we bring our knowledge to
sit with the knowledge that exists here today. How do we walk as one. So I'd like
to share this old song for our international guests and our national
guests from us as West Australians like this song has kept us safe and strong
for thousands of years and it will for us as West Australians and to everybody
who visit and thank you for having us.
Some of the energies that exist here in our ancient land the way it has done for
our past and our elders of yesterday who have written these things into us. May
that energy also be written into our children of tomorrow no matter what
nation they come from. Because a sense of place is important and it can only exist
because how do our children and our elders continue to hold our hands of
tomorrow's people. So thank you, may you have a great day
my older energies come forth to help the knowledge that exists here to develop
programs that will balance us as a community and welcome and stay safe.
Finding it hard to speak after that, sometimes in life you experience really
special moments and that for me was a really special thing to hear Barry speak
the way he spoke and also about where we located and the fact that what this
workshop is about today and I think at any point in today where we're
struggling to find a reference point for what we're here for
I think if we reflect on Barry's first words. With that I'd like to introduce
Scott Hollingworth, thank you. Good morning everybody as was said my name is
Scott Hollingworth and I'm the Interim Assistant Director General
Strategy and Policy. It's my very great pleasure to welcome you here today for
the second age-friendly workshop. The overwhelming response to today's
workshop demonstrates that Western Australians are very much committed to
building an age-friendly Western Australia and we've got close to
a hundred and twenty people in the room today including representatives from
regional Western Australia, state government, local government and the
private and community sectors. You will be aware from the introduction in
relation to my title that the state government has recently undergone some
machinery of government changes and as a result the Department of Communities was
born on the 1st of July so we're just a matter of a couple of weeks old and just
by way of clarification the Department of Communities includes the old
Communities components of the Department of Local Government and Communities the
Disability Services Commission the Department of Child Protection the Youth
Justice components of the Department of Corrective Services and the Department
of Housing so it's now a very large department indeed and brings with it of
course a significant amount of grunt as far as delivering things of concern for
the people of Western Australia. And indeed we're very much clear that the
role of the new Department of Communities is to provide improved
services with better joining up of services across all of those areas and
through that hopefully we'll be able to work with Western Australians
to actually cause them and help them to lead better lives.
The newly formed Communities team are focused on ensuring that we all receive
our services and supports so that we can drive and thrive and make
real choices. One key aspect of our work is helping older Western Australians to
feel included, welcomed and respected in the community and to be able to do the
things that they value. As a newly appointed affiliate member of the World
Health Organization's Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities, this
is a role that we take very seriously and I'd suggest that you all take very
seriously for being here today. Building an age-friendly Western
Australia however requires partnerships and collaboration, it requires all of us
to work together and to listen to the needs of our older residents of Western
Australia. Our strong commitment to work collaboratively across state, local
government and community organisations has been very much recognised by the
World Health Organisation in giving us that affiliate status, and indeed it's
the key connection with local government in particular that was very important in
receiving that affiliation recognition. This collaborative approach
was also a key in the success of the Life in Pictures short film
competition. Life in Pictures was a unique, creative collaboration between
the state government, the Revelation Film Festival and Screenwest. The competition
used short film to stimulate community discussion about Ageing. Later today you
also have the chance to see some of the films, including the winners and they are
really very, very good. Importantly, Life in Pictures celebrates the achievement
of older people in Western Australia, drawing on different perspectives of
what it means to age. Close to 50 films were submitted and over 250 people
attended the screening last week at the Luna Cinemas. A key component of the
success of the competition, was the contribution of so many local
governments and community organisations that promoted the initiative and
participated. The state government intends to use the film submitted to
continue its work to encourage community conversations about ageing and to celebrate the achievements of
older Western Australians. Hosting today's workshop is part of our
commitment to working collaboratively to create an Age-friendly WA, the workshop
program was developed based on feedback received from the 2016 age-friendly
workshop and the work of the Age-friendly Interagency Group, which is a
group of government agencies and UWA and local government, and there's a range of
representatives here today if you wanted to meet them. I hope you find the
presentations relevant and interesting and that you take away ideas to continue
your work to build communities in which older Western Australians can lead
fulfilling lives. Unfortunately the Honourable Mick Murray MLA
Minister for Seniors and Ageing was not able to come today. I'm very pleased
however to welcome Jessica Shaw, Member for Swan hills to officially welcome you,
thanks very much. Good morning everyone,
first of all I'd like to pay my respects to the traditional
owners of the land on which we meet this morning, the Wadjuk Noongar people and
acknowledge their leaders past, present and emerging. And can I also just
reiterate how moved I was by the Welcome to Country, it's actually the second that
I've heard from Barry McGuire he is a very inspirational speaker and always I
think communicates very clearly the link between place and communities and
the relationships, the very special relationships, that the Indigenous
community have. Look it is it's my genuine pleasure to be here today
representing Mick Murray, the Minister for Seniors and Ageing to officially welcome
you to the second Age-friendly WA Workshop. As part of my preparation for
this morning I reviewed the proceedings from the last ageing workshop,
Age-friendly Workshop and I thought that it seemed that there were some
really fascinating discussions that were held so I'm sure that there will be many
more today. I'd like to acknowledge the attendance of Dr. Jayne Barrett,
Secretary-General of the International Federation on Ageing,
Logan Howlett, Mayor City of Cockburn, Rachel Thomas, President Shire of
Peppermint Grove, Don Gibson, Councillor Shire of Chittering, Tom Barling, Councillor
City of Melville, Clive Robertson, Councillor City of
Melville, Robert Thomas, Councillor Town of Cottesloe, Mark Teale, Chief Executive
Officer of the Council of the Ageing WA, Gerri Clay, Chief Executive Officer
Independent Living Centre WA and Rhonda Parker, Chief Executive
Officer Alzheimers WA. Building communities in which older Western
Australians feel valued, respected and included is a priority for this
government. A key way of achieving this is by building an Age-friendly Western
Australia. 75 of Western Australia's local governments have received funding
from the State Government to support Age-friendly planning or initiatives. However
a recent evaluation is found that many more local governments have been
undertaking this planning without funding. Age-friendly environments is a
global movement and I think this is what interests me most in the approach.
Worldwide cities and communities are working so that older people are able to
live fulfilling lives so that they can participate in their community and stay
connected to the people and activities that are important to them. The
Age-friendly movement is continually growing, learning, sharing and innovating. I look
forward to hearing Dr. Jane Barrett speak more about what is happening
internationally later this morning and as a state we should be very proud of
our leadership in this global movement. In June the government of Western
Australia announced, was announced (sorry), as the first Australian
affiliate of the WHO's Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities.
This achievement reflects more than 10 years work to build age friendly
communities. It sees WA join an esteemed list of international leaders. The
state's membership reflects and acknowledges a commitment to listen to
the needs of an ageing population, the state's acceptance into the global
network reflects our commitment to our work to build Age-friendly Communities.
This includes working across state and local governments,
and within the community, and with the private sector, to build communities that
value older adults. Recognition as a global network affiliate is a
significant achievement, I'm sure you will agree, this is a key milestone and
acknowledgement of WA's leadership in building Age-friendly communities.
However we must continue to be innovative, to seek new ideas and to work
together to ensure our old people can live fulfilling lives. This is one of the
reasons why today's workshop is so important, I encourage you to share your
experiences and to speak openly about the challenges and the opportunities. In
the room we have age friendly champions, local government elected members,
community and private sector representatives. You are all here for a
common purpose, to propel Western Australia forward as an age-friendly
state. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you and to listen to you
today and I wish you all the very best for a very rewarding workshop. Thank you.
I'd like to, I've got the honour of introducing Jane Barrett. I was really
lucky to attend a session with her yesterday and I think you're in for an
amazing 40 minutes and question time, so Jane. Good morning
ladies and gentlemen. You know in 12 months such a lot has changed in our
world, in my world in North America we have a whole new
administration in the USA, and just this morning on the radio I found out
that in Britain retirement age for those in the 37 to 45 age group will be 68
years of age. That says something about our population ageing, the demographic
shift and the cost to government of us living much longer. You know one central
point you know to consider is that we live in a very diverse world
and older people as a population are diverse and unique, so just as a recap
this is how we define age-friendly environments and when we're talking
about Age-friendly we're really talking people of all ages and yet today we're
particularly considering older adults. And for the course of the day let's try
and think about the language that we're using, because older adults versus
seniors you know it's a different connotation and I can tell you that the
word seniors is certainly in the past as we go into our future. So it's true
that the State of Western Australia was announced by WHO as an affiliate
member and thank you very much for making that note, it's certainly an
auspicious announcement. The work starts now because what happens when you're an
affiliate you actually pledge an agreement with the World Health
Organisation, you know a three-year plan and this plan has milestones, so the work
has just begun. I also need to recognize the work of the Department, you know in
coming into this process because being named an affiliate, and it's not an
affiliate in Australia, it's an affiliate globally. There are very few affiliates
that are State and Provincial in the world so the team that put together the
application and went through the hoops with the WHO really deserve a round
of applause, because it's not easy (applause).
So yes, State of Western Australia and that's us
that's you and the work that you're doing today and in the future. So that's
the global network at the moment you know the 500th city was Paris and just
to give you an indication of the lay of the land, the state
of Western Australia is represented on the expert group that is really mapping
out the future of the governance and management of the global network so
that's really something to be very proud of but it's a very serious initiative. So,
I don't often put these profiles up but I do want you to
consider the changes in 2015 and 2020. So what we're talking about is
certainly the globe is ageing, population ageing is one of the demographic
upheavals, the other two being globalisation and urbanisation are very
much here to stay, but the way we think about older people, the way that we talk
about older people has got to dramatically change. There needs to be a
fundamental shift in the way that we speak about older people, we are as older
people and the way that we create our environments for and with older people.
So the words seniors, the word old age, there 65 cut off, you know that is
actually changing around the world. Now the way that we talk about older people
and are as older people varies tremendously, and that's why the WHO and member
States have decided that there will be a global campaign to combat ageism. On the
one hand we have the Atlantic, which is talking about old people are cool, the
effortless hipness of senior citizens, yeah right. There are
few, but then on the other end of the spectrum we have the Japanese Minister,
was the Japanese Minister, saying let elderly people hurry up and die. He
didn't last very long in that portfolio, because he was really talking about the
cost of palliative care, so that was the end of the Minister! But I think that you
can agree that we actually run the whole gamut when we're talking about who we
are as older citizens, people and about older people. So these are the three very
important report frameworks through which Age-friendly Cities and
Communities come from. The first being the UN Madrid International Plan
of Action on Ageing, the second the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and the
third the WHO Global Strategy and Action Plan. I put these up here to give
you a sense of the weight of the work that's being done in Western Australia.
So these are the documents that your work is going to be fed into, because
Federal Government has to report on the review of the MIPAA every five years, UN
Sustainable Development Goals, I'll show you in a minute how Age-friendly and
older people fit into that framework, and thirdly the Age-friendly Environment
Priority is one of five priorities in the global strategy and action plan.
These are the three priorities in MIPAA and these are the two in which age
friendly links closely, advancing health and well-being into older age and
ensuring enabling and supportive environments. And these are the
sustainable development goals and each of those dots is where older people fit
in, Australia is reporting against the SDG's, they are actually going to be
pulling information from all of the States around the activities with older
people, for older people and it links in to these SDG's, so we're part of a global
plan and reporting mechanism. World Report on ageing and health, I won't go into it
in great detail because we talked about it last year, but just to give you a
reminder of the five priority goals and measurement, monitoring and research is
probably that Achilles heel when we come to - how do we measure, monitor the impact
of Age-friendly cities, communities and environments, so I'm looking
forward to listening to Loretta's discussion later today. To give
you a reminder of the shift in the way of thinking about how we define health.
In 1948 our thought was that it is a
state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease. But now in 2015 we're talking about, it's a process and it's
around function. So when I talked about the fundamental shift in the way that we
think and act with and for older people it's these two words, it's a process and
it's about function. I bring this up because the common dialogue at a
governmental level is around cost, the cost of older people, the economic and
social cost, the burden of older people and so you can see where health fits in.
It's an important consideration constantly, so when I'm talking about
there'll be two billion older people in 2050 or there's 901 million older people
now or in 2040 in Western Australia one in four people will be over the age of
65, the immediate thought is aged care. These people are going to require some
services etc, but we know that that's not always the case. It is important though
to show you the cost and the increased prevalence of people with
non-communicable diseases, diabetes, lung disease, cancer and cardiovascular
disease. So the number of people the world with those conditions in 2015,
and it's not only the one, it's the complex co-morbidities of these
conditions which make it very difficult to treat an individual holistically, but
also to be able to case manage, so that's the cost.
WHO in 2015, the cost globally of diabetes 825 billion,
12 billion for lung diseases, but what's more important, to me, is
really the people, the functional implications of non-communicable
diseases. So for example someone with diabetes that doesn't have access to
screening, is likely to have diabetic retinopathy, diabetic macular edema and
they are not going to be able to manage their own care. So it's not the labeling
of the conditions it's the consequence on someone's function that is going to
impact. If we then talked about age-friendly cities and communities, what do
we need to do in that environment to enable a person with diabetes to
actually know about the screening, get transport to the screening, know
when their appointment is, manage all of their medications so that they don't get
diagnosed with DR or DME, so that's where an age-friendly environment comes into
play. It's not only about your park benches or the traffic lights or people
knowing about a condition, we've got to look at this quite differently now.
Briefly, health characteristics in old age. Here are some natural underlying changes that we will all go through in the aging
process, it's not bad, it's good, it's a natural process. But you can see the
complexities that are given rise to in older age. Let me explain this
in a different way. Someone living
in downtown Washington DC, the average life expectancy is 55, if you catch a
train 20 miles out, the average life expectancy is 77, and what's that saying
to us, it's saying that where you're born, the kind of nutrition, the kind of
education, the kind of opportunities that you have when you're born, where you're
born. Person, place, position will carry with you throughout your life.
So those that are living in a social disadvantage situation from the get go,
will actually have more poor quality outcomes. So we've got to think about
that when we're also thinking about age-friendly environments. So you may have to
look at what are the specific needs of your community and if you look at the
eight domains, if I, if we if collectively
community could solve this issue, would it have a corollary effect on all of the
other issues? Rather than take the eight, what are the one or two that's going to
make that difference, the domino that actually shifts a person's function,
that's what we need to be considering. Okay this is quite familiar to you,
talking about environment and this would be familiar to you also, intrinsic
capacity, the person and the interrelationship with the environment.
That's what healthy ageing is about it's not only me, it's not only my physical,
mental, social it's the relationship that I have with environment. The hypothetical
trajectories, I want to be on A, I want to, throughout my life, have a
gradual, natural, diminishing of function until I drop off the perch. We
don't want to be C, if I can't be A then I'll be B, and what I'm looking at
there is someone, and it could be through I've got diabetes, I
haven't been for my screening, I have visual disturbances, I fall over,
fractured neck of femur, hospital, so the trajectory actually changes
because there's been an instant. And I showed you this last year too, but just
to remind you about, we're talking about the intrinsic capacity and functional
ability and throughout these three stages, if a person is in stage 2 and
it's not a natural progression, so we're not all going to be sitting in
significant loss of capacity, we always have the opportunity of improving our
functional ability but it depends on the environment and that's why age-friendly
is critical, to be critically linked to healthy ageing. There's lots and
lots of work being done on models around age-friendly. Do you know I've often
worked with these people, but I never know what to do with this afterwards.
It looks great and it's up on the wall, but I actually want to be able to
take it into a different place. But this is from Bristol so there's been a lot of
work and thinking. The eight domains are not so prescriptive anymore,
they are an important guide, but sometimes there's a lot of flexibility
around it and I'm just going to give you some examples. The strategy for
Age-friendly was stimulated through the New Zealand healthy aging strategy, so you
can see that there are some elements of the Age-friendly
domains but they're not prescriptive. But what happened is that 2016 it was
launched and it stimulated action around Age-friendly at a community level, here
are the structural domains, but I really want to bring to your attention today
functional domains and ask you this afternoon to be thinking about how
structural and functional fit together. Okay I want to go on and give you some
examples, and what I've tried to do is take each of the structural domains and
give you an example of what's happening somewhere in the world. So
in Jerusalem they have a specific program for under the rubric of
employment and participation for 60-plus, and this came about from a single person
that wanted to be re-employed. So it was a community discussion, yet then went to
an NGO, the NGO was sufficiently, substantive and linked with the
government in terms of advocacy, that there was a funded program, a pilot
program, and it's continuing to this day. So that's a good example of what's
happening in a community level, creates change, partnerships and then
redefinition of an older person. It's interesting, the IFA has been doing some
really challenging work around cognitive reserve and you know we had some of the
world thinkers from Australia coming to a meeting, an expert meeting around
cognitive reserve, cognitive health and functioning, and one of the elements that
they're talking about now is the importance of purpose. Whether
it be paid work, unpaid work, continuous learning, education, so these
interventions are actually critical to our cognitive health also. Burlington,
Canada, the Homeshare program. the Homeshare program is where younger people
and older people are in communal living and the younger person has a substantial
subsidy to actually be a carer, a care worker for the seniors, for the older
people. In the Halton Region, that's one of the reasons I live in Canada, it's
fantastic, very short lived, but just magnificent.
Winters not so good, and that's 440,000
residents and once again, the senior connector program, it actually responds
to a need, what they did in the Halton region was they looked at their
statistics, they looked at how there was shifts in the number of couples that
were in the region and what had occurred. So this connector program came out of
the need of many widows being in one community and so once again, it was a
community built program and it's now funded by the local government and it
literally connects people to one another. This is another example from Baycrest
and Baycrest is one of the most eminent centres in the world in terms of brain
health and volunteers of all ages, but they've got a particular group of older
volunteers that participate in talking about the ageing process and
dementia. Barcelona now, one of the areas that we don't understand really how to
respond to most adequately, is respect inclusion, combating ageism, dignity we
know what disrespect is, but we don't know what respect looks like and feels
like. And so there was a community theater group that came together and not
only worked with younger people and put on plays, but then started to have forums
that were attended by people of all ages. Not so long ago I was in a Hong Kong at
the first gerontological summit on ageing. And just to give you a sense of
what's happening in Hong Kong and the innovation, it was across three days
and the organisers, which was the Hong Kong Council of Social Services and the
government, were hoping for 25,000 attendees at the summit across three
days. On the first day they had 38,000 people through the doors and so why?
Because there's such curiosity and interest around
how gerontechnology can actually be part of this enabling mechanism. And this
is a gentleman who is a musician and new eyes are new glasses that he can wear so
that he can actually see his audience. In Sri Lanka one quarter of the population will be
over the age of 65 by 2040 and one of the critical problems that were
identified in the assessment of needs of older people, was access to screening
services for vision problems. So there's now camps and this is funded by industry.
Another example from Baycrest, a phenomenal innovation where virtual
reality, this particular clip shows shows the woman is looking at herself in
younger days along the beach, and I'll give you the slides so that
you can tap into that YouTube video. But it's a phenomenal response that she goes
through in terms of her behaviour. And this is about education of healthcare
professionals and we see that as also part of age-friendly because one of the
structural domains is community health and services. Once again
education and there's innovations in terms of online training but
it's actually very programmed, so that you can evaluate yourself on the way.
Newcastle on Tyne, the statistics that I looked at said that by 2017 there'd be
50 million people projected in the world with Alzheimer's disease, and one of the
innovations in Newcastle on Tyne is to have one session per week thats
dedicated to families and people with dementia, families of and people with
dementia. The Kwai Tsing District, their priority was priority seats at rain
shelters. And Sausalita, transportation. So in
each of these example what's happened is there's been a very in-depth
assessment of the needs of that particular group of older people, versus
what we think the community may need. It takes us back to this differential
between the intrinsic capacity and the functional capacity, so in each of these
examples what we need to be looking at is how this program, this intervention
has actually improved the functional capacity of the person, rather than
considering the chronological age of the person. Because we know that if there's
an improvement in functional capacity and abilities, then there's much more
likelihood that they will have the capacities to actually participate in
community. So here are the elements that I look at when I consider an
age-friendly environment. Enhancing quality of life, functional
status and minimizing symptoms. All right I want to talk, I want to turn the tables
now and give you an example around how a health condition can impact the person's
function and therein ask the question, what should we be doing?
So the issue is pneumococcal pneumonia, we know that one in five people will
have pneumococcal pneumonia over the age of 65. Here are some stats from Europe
9,000 cases in Europe, three million annually, one million go to hospital and it
costs 10 billion dollars per year, it's a lot of money. So we also know that there
are particular groups of older people who are at risk, at risk of getting
pneumococcal pneumonia, at risk of hospitalisation and then at risk of the
implications of hospitalisation. So those with chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease and asthma, asthma have up to 13.5 times more risk of hospitalisation
and pneumococcal pneumonia. Chronic heart disease 3.3, diabetes 1.4, this is a high
risk group. We can also know that if you have COPD and diabetes, they're greater
predictors of hospitalisation when you have pneumococcal pneumonia. What happens
if you've got pneumonia and you're hospitalised or not hospitalised, here
are some of the symptoms. Weakness, cough, tiredness, body aches, wheezing, shortness
of breath, weak appetite, they seem to be reasonable? This is the problem, so the
prevalence of these symptoms, this is the functional abilities that
are impacted by pneumococcal pneumonia. So loss of balance, limitations in
self-care, difficulty moving at home, kept from usual home duties, kept from
visiting others, kept from going places. So we are becoming isolated, we're not able
to move around our house, we've got a loss of balance, we can't see our
grandchildren, we can't look after our grandchildren, we can't and this can go on
for weeks, into months. So you can see it's a problem, so what would happen, what
would likely happen to someone in this situation? The thing that I immediately
think of is, they're going to fall, so we're going to have an incident where
someone falls and they may be admitted to hospital. So let's look at falls, it's
the second leading cause of accidental unintentional injury deaths worldwide,
and this is the cost. 424,000 die annually,
37 million need medical attention. Cost per fall US$1050. So what would you do, if
you're thinking about this issue, it's a health issue but it impacts
function, and if healthy ageing was within the public health framework and you're
thinking about an age-friendly environment, what could be an
intervention to prevent that? Falls prevention, could be. Design of houses, could be okay.
Anything else? Sorry? Vaccinations. Do you know the uptake rate of adult
vaccinations for flu, for pneumococcal pneumonia, for shingles is extremely low
worldwide. Even in Canada where vaccines are free for flu, very poor uptake rate.
Now whether you're pro or con it, that's irrelevant. But the issue here is
that we actually need to back up and start talking about the ageing process
and healthy ageing, way back. So the conversation that we need to be having
about ageing and what, how we want to live our lives into our 40's, 50's, and 60's and
70's, it's actually a conversation that starts back here. Because this word
called retirement actually doesn't even exist, because we don't retire from life,
we actually stop doing something and start doing something else. And if we're
planning for our future, our planning needs to include purposeful activity,
novelty, new learning, education, unpaid work, paid work that's the package of
things that we know, that evidence shows us, is going to either maintain or
improve our functioning. So it's that package of things and they all fit into
an age-friendly environment. So in closing, function is central to the new
narrative. It's not about disability, it's
about how does the environment, how do we create this environment that enables us
to do what we value, maintains and improves a person's function and
function, is not only physical, it's the ability to connect socially, to be part
of, to be worthy. And we know from the great Japanese study of the Okinawans,
that the single most important factor in longevity and healthy ageing in Okinawans,
is not only the food that they eat, it's about this reason to get up in the
morning. Secondly, culture, gender and diversity must be recognized. I was
delighted this morning, because I had a coffee with one of my directors and I
said how's your business Graham? Good, good, and we're increasingly, actually
accepting older prisoners, and older prisoners, migrants, refugees, older LGBT
people, are part of our community that seem to actually be put to one side from time
to time. So age-friendly needs to respond to the cultural and diverse needs of our
unique population. Evidence comes in all shapes and forms, it's not about the
numbers, and that's why we need people like Loretta and her team at UWA and
others, to help us understand this very complex methodology, that we're going to
need to measure impact. Projects without monitoring measuring are of little value,
they just feel good for us, they don't last, they're not sustainable and I'm
constantly reminded of the work of the City of Melville, and how it's gone so
far, because they had the data. And so it's very, very important that part of
our conversation this afternoon is not only about the next
steps, but the next steps include...how do we measure and monitor this. And vertical
and horizontal policy development creates change, and what I mean by that
is, you know we've got this unique thing happening in Western Australia because
it's a rare opportunity, where actually people from different ministries are
talking to one another, about a common agenda, and it's about
this life course approach to ageing that's a horizontal, but also vertical.
This is a plug for the IFA Conference in 2018 and if anyone wants to know
anything more about it, please let me know. And I'm just constantly in
admiration and awe of the people that I meet in the course of my job, and
I had an interview with a colleague not so long ago and she said
what makes a good leader? What is it? And I said I'm not sure what makes a good
leader, but what makes me is being humbled by the people around me.
Because the people around me, help make me who I am, and it's that for me,
it's that kind of sentiment that enables me to get up every morning and to
communicate what I know and what I believe in and openly listen to what
other people. I look at these pictures and see that they're a person
demonstrating their uniqueness, and I thank you very much for the opportunity
to be with you today. (applause)
So if anybody's got any questions I'm happy to answer. ... I'm from City
of Subiaco, first of all great presentation, really inspiring. I just
wanted to ask you throughout the presentation you referred to a lot of the
initiatives that's been community driven, and within WA local governments in
particular are moving away from direct service delivery in the age-friendly
space and moving more into kind of community development models and how we
implement them in the community, and I wanted to ask you if you have any
opinions on kind of the best Community Development models to use in this space?
I don't have an opinion as to what's best or good, I think what I come
back to constantly is being very particular about understanding what the
needs of the community is, I think that what we don't do well is we don't really
understand who the people are, what their needs are from a different lens now. I've
talked a lot today about function and I've talked and I hope I've conveyed
that within this functional framework, this healthy ageing framework,
we have this intrinsic capacity, what are the health issues that give
rise to certain levels of function? Right, then if we understand that, then what is
the intervention, what is the community programs that are going to enable that
person to do what they value. So it's for me, and this is different, this
is how my thinking has evolved, it's now not good enough to put in
alternative transportation systems. Whereas 12 months ago it was good enough
for me, now my understanding is much deeper, that we actually have to know a
little bit more. Because an alternative transportation system wouldn't help my
mother, whose mobility issues are so significant,
she wouldn't even attempt the public transportation system. So we've got to do
a lot more exploration and understanding of the community that we're dealing with,
and the relationship of the community with the environment. Does that
does that help? I think also, a lot of the work in Canada is
based on community development models so I'm happy to share some contacts there,
that you may be able to connect. I think it's also important to let you know that the
IFA in partnership with the WHO, is actually in the process of developing a
mentor-mentee program. So I think the Western Australian, you, involved in it,
should be part of that program, that pilot program. Because I think that's
going to be important. Any other questions?
Hi Jane, oh hi how are you?! It's great to have you back here again this
year, we're very fortunate. So my question comes from yesterday I was fortunate to
be at the OT Conference National held here in WA and there was a presentation
around home modifications and it really looked at, for the individual, for the
consumer, how effective were the outcomes. And the results from it were, indicated,
that the more the person had full say and participated in the approach that
was implemented in their home, the more effective the outcomes in all kinds of
different domains. So my question is, I wondered if you'd come across examples
where that really strong co-design with people older people who live in a
community, was being able to impact on the age-friendly designs that were being
put in place? Yeah great question, you know and great study,
I mean OT's could have guessed what the outcome would be, but it's a great study.
Some of the best work is being done in Scandinavia in terms of co-design,
not only in terms of modifications but also in the sort of the innovative ways
generations are working together. So I think Scandinavia is where to go, and
I can certainly give you some contacts there Gerri, I think the other point to
make there is, how we have, I say we the collective, we have de-legitimised the
voice of an older person, and we do it constantly. And I think within family, and
I often speak about my own personal circumstances within family, children
need to understand how they manage their risk, in watching mum and dad continue to
be independent as they can. So it comes back to, if researchers and community
developers, local government are truly wanting older people to be part of the
conversation in the solution, why aren't they leading the project? Because often
they don't lead the project, they're just sitting at the table and I'm curious, I
mean I'm the natural disrupter, I'd be really curious to see what would
happen, and some of the instances that I've shown you, the examples are very
much led by older people. So I'd be very curious whether that could
happen in this kind of environment, led. Hi Jane...
I actually came
here for a focus on how my group could facilitate my involvement of seniors
with particularly the disadvantaged migrants in terms of
mentor-mentee, but it also caught my attention when I looked around the room
the diversity of people here. So I just want to ask you from Canadian
perspective, because I know that the Canadian Immigration Policy is similar
to Australia one and I know that we try to invite people that are younger to
come over to work. But I think there is an increasing population of seniors even
from the culturally and linguistically diverse people. So I just want to ask you
what's your perspective, when you do similar things across the globe, is this
the kind of diversity you see in the room, where we have less and less people
of other colours and cultures. Where I live in Toronto I think
there's about 135 different languages in the Greater Toronto area, so we talk
about diversity. The words diversity are not often used in Canada, it
just is and I think when I see the differences between Canada and
often in Australia is that there is no attempt of integration but
there are communities of, and I think that that's the difference. If we
look at it in the context of age-friendly, it comes back to the point
that I made to to Gerri, we as people that want to enable a
community to live in the best possible way, in the most healthy way, need to be
acutely listening to not what the person, not only what the person says, but
looking at where they've, hearing where they've come from, and what they bring to
this place and the issue, I think it's a conversation that we
don't have on a regular basis here, I think it's a conversation that we need
to have much more of. So I'm looking forward to you leading some discussions
on this, because it's imperative. .... I'm an advocate with
Advocare and we deal with elder abuse and the issues around aged care and
service provision. I'm, I've just been looking around the room and reflecting
here and thinking about what you were talking about inclusiveness and I wonder
how many people sitting in this room are actually over 65, so are within the
cohort that we're talking about and I also recognise that a lot of people here
will go away with wonderful ideas and sit and have a consultative group within
their structures. But the involvement of older people needs to be taken more
seriously and it would have been nice to maybe have seen here, everybody who was a
younger person bringing someone that was over 65 to also participate in this and
so that they could have their say. Because very often we see as older
people, and I fall into that category myself, that decisions are made for us on
our behalf with very little or very limited consultation to the group
decisions being made for. So I would ask that there is more inclusiveness as
opposed to exclusion within the sector of decision making abilities that have
been passed on. Thanks Anne, for your comment and I think it's worthy
to have that comment, but you know I actually think that we're moving on.
The comment before I made was about we need, are we de-legitimising
the voice of older people, and I stand by that, but I
actually believe that we've moved on, are moving on. There will always be those
older people, and I'm one of them, you're one of them, who cares.
It's about people, there are people that we actually can't get to, so
even if we bought a person along, we're not getting to those older homeless,
those older prisoners, those older migrants, so I'm real, I want to
be real in my answer, and that is that I believe that we are actually moving
forward, I believe there are pockets in this room that actually are talking, and
are listening and older people are joining in. And so there are
opportunities from this group to actually take your points, and perhaps
it's some of the principles that we want to work by in the future. I think your
point is well made, but I also think we need to actually go okay we need to
remember that, and we need to also move forward.
So thank you. Hi Jane .... I work independently with a
personal and professional interest in ageing, but I was at your session last
night and I was the one that Noreen referred to the speaker who asked the
question about caring for older people, and the issue she raised was coping with
older people who are afraid to ask for help.
I actually went up to at the end of the session and we had quite an
interesting conversation, but I applaud your comment about not de-legitimising
older people's voice and I tried as tactfully as possible to take that
position with her last night, that you know older people actually have the
right to make the decision to live at home, fall down, break a leg etc. etc. In
general terms. But I think there is a connection with that in an earlier point
you made about people thinking ahead earlier, so these experiences of caring
for an older person actually teaches you a hell of a lot
about ageing too, and reflecting about your own personal ageing. Thank you. Yeah look,
thank you, and I was thinking about my comment from last night about walking
with my father at 4:00am, and I was, as I was trying to navigate wet grass and
lumpy, lumpy footpaths and I'm thinking why am I doing this again, and it's to have a
conversation with my father. But he takes risks every morning at 4 o'clock because
of his balance etc. etc. but that's his risk and I actually have to live with
that and that's okay for me. Thank you I'd like to introduce Marlene Krasovitsky,
she is the Campaign Director, Older Australians with The Benevolent
Society. Prior to joining TBS, Marlene was the Director of Willing to Work, the
National Inquiry into Employment Discrimination Against Older Australians
and Australians with Disability with the Australian Human Rights Commission. So
I'd like you to welcome Marlene, thank you. Now I would like to
start today by sharing some work with you that we're doing at The Benevolent
Society, at The Benevolent Society we're committed to building a campaign to
tackle ageism and we're calling it Every Age Counts. I'm going to come back to our
campaign at the end of the presentation today, but as part of this work we've
been trying to unpack what actually drives ageism, most of us know what
ageism kind of looks like, but what are the drivers of ageism, what are the
attitudes and beliefs out there about getting older and about older people. And
so we've been asking people across all across all ages,
a range of very, very simple questions and I'm going to give you a selection of
responses here today. This is the sort of range of responses that we're getting, it
sucks, I'm anxious about my financial security,
it's fine as long as I've got control, I want choice, independence, I'm concerned
about being a burden, it's inevitable, shoot me,
euthanize me, and so on. I'm fearful. That's the sort of, it's the selection of
responses but the proportions are about right in terms of positives and
negatives. The next question we asked people, What words do you associate with
getting older? Again a selection, slow, death, frailty, funerals, grumpy, lonely,
nursing homes, loss, loss of confidence, bowls, bingo and so on. Again both
positives and negatives, the proportions are about the same, of the much
broader sample we're getting. There's certainly some very good stuff in there,
but for the most part it doesn't really appear to be a stage of life most of us
are looking forward to. It's also a very undifferentiated bunch of words, there
are no distinctions between people in their 60's and people in their 80's, in the
same way as you might expect there to be distinctions between questions if you
ask people who are 15 versus 35. And our recent research also tells us that
people have very, very different ideas in their heads about what it means to be
old. For some people it's in their 40's, for
other people it's a hundred. Regardless of all of that though, given that bunch
of associations and those words that are coming up, I would suggest you
might struggle to find work. Now we know that here in Australia and many other
nations, we're living longer healthier lives and that's a good thing right, but
you'd be hard-pressed to know it. If you read a lot of government publications if
you read media stories, the alarmist rhetoric of the tsunami of baby boomers
and the crisis and the burden and so on, I must say
I heard a particularly unsavoury one the other day that I definitely will not use
and it's called 'the age bulge' so we'll put that to
one side. Anyway, we know that Australians are also
redefining growing older and challenging many of the myths and assumptions and
stereotypes, but our cultural norms our societal attitudes and our expectations
are just much, much slower to follow and they're simply not keeping up and we
continually bump up against these outdated models, policies and ways of
thinking. So today I want to do a number of things, I want to discuss the various
ages, stages and phases of ageism. Particularly within the specific context
where many people identify and experience ageism and that's when
they're looking for work or at work. I want to talk about the impacts of ageism
and why we should do something about it, I'll also cover a few examples of good
practice to get you inspired and then I'll come back to our campaign Every Age
Counts. Now today I'm not going to start with graphs and statistics, I think Jane
gave us an incredible overview and I'm sure you're familiar with some of the
ones within Australia as well. But I do want to talk about some stories and
these are stories that are drawn from the Willing to Work National Inquiry. Let
me tell you about Elizabeth. Elizabeth had a very, very positive long-standing
association with her employer, she'd been filling a replacement
contract for this employer when the incumbent that she had backfilled had
decided to retire and so the position was advertised, and of course Elizabeth
put in an application and presumes she would be a very strong candidate. She
knew that the interviews were happening and she hadn't been told when her
interview was and so when she asked, she said actually she wasn't going to get an
interview because the organisation had a policy that when someone retires they
want to replace them with someone younger. Elizabeth was told they were
looking for a new generation. Abel is in his late 50's and had worked as a cleaner
for many years. Abel is deaf and instead of
communicating by a two-way radio with his supervisor, he communicated by SMS.
When the cleaning company changed ownership, Abel's new supervisor
complained about having to communicate by SMS. After six months under this new
supervisor Abel was told that he had not passed his probation,
there was no reason given and Abel actually wasn't aware that he was on
probation. But after this experience he decided that there was really no point
in him looking for further work. Sascha, Sascha works in a leading residential
aged-care facility. She's like many people who work in her
sector, English is not her first language, she's 59 and prior to working in aged
care she had a whole other professional life. She loves her new work and she
feels empowered in a way that she never has before,
and she loves working with the people who live at her workplace. Recently the
organisation arranged for a film crew to come in and to shoot a promotional video
for the organisation showcasing their work, the crew was there all day and
filmed a great deal of footage about the things that happen over the course of a
day, and despite being filmed for the better part of that day, Sasha told us
how disappointed she was that she had not made it into any of the video, and
that the whole video exclusively featured the younger female
care workforce and their interactions with the people who lived in that
facility. I went away I couldn't believe that story, I watched that video and so
Sascha was 100% correct. Now I wish I could tell you that these stories are one-offs
but they're not and the stories I've chosen, I hope also demonstrate for you
some of the intersectionality with issues not only around ageism
but around sexism and discrimination against people with disability. So let me
just start with ageism and talk a little bit about what it looks like and
then answer the question, well so what? So we know that ageism is prejudiced
against expressed toward anyone because their age, but many of us have
internalised ageist attitudes, there's so much a part of our social norms and
language it's sometimes really hard to spot them, let alone identify them as
discriminatory. Ever joked about those seniors movements, or about being over
the hill and I know I sure am guilty of buying a friend one of those annoying
birthday card that says sorry you're another year older.
The irony is of course that somebody much wiser than me who said, that when
we're ageist, we set ourselves up for prejudice against our future selves. Now
most ageist attitudes and stereotypes are negative, for example older people
are vulnerable, helpless, useless, sick, forgetful, slow, weak, incompetent and a
burden. But a few are superficially positive like the cute little old lady,
the sweet old man stereotypes, but these stereotypes also serve to disempower
older people because they discourage others from seeing them as capable
adults with a full range of human complexities and capacities and
attitudes and needs as anybody else. Likewise there are very superficial
positive images of the extraordinary older person, the amazing marathon
running granny, the septuagenarian supermodel, the unbelievable octogenarian
bodybuilder, these serve also only to reinforce these people as exceptions to
the norm of slow, weak, incapacitated, unattractive, which is what most older
people are. Now ageism has a profound impact on the way older people are
perceived and underpins exclusionary behaviours in discrimination. We know that
age discrimination in Australia is common, yet data collected by
Commonwealth state and territory human rights and anti-discrimination agencies
confirms that complaints and inquiries of Age Discrimination are brought at
lower rates than discrimination against other types, other protected attributes.
Why? Because it's also well documented that many people who experience ageism
on the basis of their age don't take any action, there are many reasons for this.
Under reporting, including perceptions about the legal process, costs, the
emotional toll of pursuing a complaint, fear of victimisation. However it's also
because ageism is so normalized. Ageism causes us to accept
discriminatory practices as natural, normal, inevitable, for instance
discriminatory recruitment practices, accepting the inevitability of disease
as we age, laughing along with those hurtful jokes. But also the other impacts
of ageism can include involuntary early retirement,
unemployment, underemployment and social exclusion, and of course as Jane reminded
us today ageism is real at across the ages. This is not about feeding into
generational wars, it's really about our particular focus at The Benevolent
Society is the ageism against older people. Okay so let's get to the what.
Ageist attitudes and assumptions create hard barriers for older people in many
areas and today as I said I want to focus on workforce participation and
here I'm going to draw on the Australian Human Rights Commission's prevalence
survey of age discrimination in the workforce as well
as the Willing to Work Inquiry. Let's look at the prevalence, according to
Australia's first national prevalence survey an age discrimination, 27% of
people over the age of 50 reported having recently experienced employment
related age discrimination. That's a horrible figure, but wait there's there's
more and it gets worse. A third of those who experienced age discrimination
gave up looking for work, there was just no point. In addition 43% of those who
reported experiencing age discrimination did not take any action. Of those that
did take action only 5% of them came to an external agency to lodge a complaint
or make an inquiry and only 14% took it up within their own organisation. For
those that did take action the most common form of action was,
leaving the job. What a waste.
We also know that while older people generally have a lower unemployment rate
than younger people, older people have greater difficulty finding subsequent
employment when they do become unemployed. According to the figures
behind me in November 2015 the average duration of unemployment for older
people with 68 weeks, compared with 49 weeks for 25 to 54 year olds, and 30
weeks for 15 to 24 year olds. Okay they're the numbers, let's see how that
translates into people's experience. These are the sorts of things that
people were telling us through the Inquiry, when people are looking for work
the sorts of things they're hearing, or they're telling us. It's as if I've got
to use by date on my forehead, stigma, age equals lazy unwilling to learn, you're a
workers compensation risk, I never felt my age until I had to look for
work, euphemisms for not getting the job, you're overqualified, you're too
experienced but also lots of euphemisms for when people are trying to attract
younger people. We're looking for someone dynamic, we're looking for someone
energetic, we're looking for someone vibrant and so on I won't go through all
of them. In terms, just to pick out a couple of them, in terms of career
progression people will tell us very regularly that people, they were
stopped being offered training opportunities or promotional
opportunities, because the assumption is you're just waiting for retirement. For
redundancies, when there are restructures, older people are often targeted maybe
because they're the most expensive to retain, maybe because the the company
wants to go through transformation. And from employers and recruiters, taking on
an older worker is seen as a social service rather than an acknowledgement
of the value of the older workers. Older workers were seen as unionized,
inflexible, they won't adapt to change. Industries focused on innovation in
order to stay relevant and that's not something you typically associate with
though candidates. Recruiters told us, if they, the recruitment companies, sent
older workers to a company, the company would stop doing business with them. And
this was a particularly interesting quote from an older person himself who'd
been a recruiter, my usual instinct was to find reasons not to employ an older
person, I know my colleagues tended to do the same. This reluctance to employ
someone older seemed quite normal, it would have seemed unusual if not foolish
to hire someone much older. Okay so, I've quickly covered the
quantitative evidence, the qualitative evidence, again let me get to the so what!
Let's look at the impact of ageism on labour force participation and the
economic and business case for doing something about it. Let's look at the
labour force participation, we know again, as I mentioned before that the labour
force participation of older Australians, particularly older women, has been rising
considerably in the last few years. But despite those increases, labour force
participation continues to decline rapidly with age. So between 55 and 59
73.8% of people are in the in the workforce
which drops very, very sharply to 12.7% for those aged 65
and over. And of course this contradicts government efforts to make us all work
longer, so it's a very interesting graph and this pattern is not shifting
anytime soon. In terms of complaints, I said that complaints were brought at
lower rates than other protected attributes, but by far the nature of the
complaints that are brought 70% are around employment. So let's turn now
to why we should do something about this. Let's look at the economic benefits. The
economic benefits of boosting mature age participation are well established and
you've got two major reports behind me the Grattan Institute and Deloitte
access economics, both of which slightly different
numbers, slightly different methodologies, but the numbers are huge in terms of
small percentage increases in lifting the labour force participation rates of
older people. The additional element that Deloitte's
talks about, is that in addition to the direct benefits to the national economy,
Deloitte notes that there are other of course indirect benefits that arise from
high participation. Like, increased retirement savings, reduced welfare costs
for future governments, better Social Inclusion and improved health outcomes
over time. In terms of the business case, bodies such as the Australian Chamber of
Commerce and Industry and the Australian Institute of Management, identify a large
number of benefits for businesses in increasing the participation of older
workers, including those that you can see behind me. One of the ones I want to
really zero in on though for a few minutes is this this very, very enduring
myth about productivity. This very pervasive myth about the lesser
productivity of older workers compared with their younger counterparts. Because
this assumption is often at the heart of early retirement policies, now again
there's a bunch of studies and some very very compelling examples from around the
world that simply refute that assumption. A review of published research carried
out by Essex Business School found very, very little evidence to back up
ingrained stereotypes of older workers when it comes to productivity, health,
commitment or flexibility. Their study found that age doesn't determine a
person's commitment and productivity levels at work and there are many other
social and psychological factors that are in fact much better indicators. They
found that older people are often faster at carrying out complex tasks that
allowed them to draw on their contextual knowledge and years of work experience.
While bottom-line speed may deteriorate, and that's a big may, the overall
efficacy of older people offsets any impact to productivity and there's a
couple of really neat very short examples I want to share with you from
Germany, which is the country with the largest ageing population in Europe. And
it's Mercedes-Benz and BMW, the key findings
of the analysis of Mercedes-Benz, was that productivity actually rises all the
way up to retirement and that older workers make fewer serious mistakes and
are able better to cope when things go wrong. The authors themselves described
these findings as striking because the jobs that these people were doing relied
on physical strength, dexterity and agility, which they thought would decline
with age. But with any negative effects that were associated with ageing
were outweighed by the positive effects, such as the ability to cope when things
go wrong. The BMW study I find fascinating, found
that the value of making small ergonomic changes to a production line, which was
staffed by people nearing 50 years old, was demonstrated to return much higher
productivity. Within three months the production line improved its
productivity by 7%, absenteeism was halved and the defect rate dropped, and
what was that small ergonomic change? Rather than the workers having to get on
gurney's and slide under the car and do whatever it is they needed to do, they
flipped the car. So that people could stand at height and work on the car. Simple
change. The case for reform is clear, the benefits of increased employment
participation for older workers extend not only to the individual workers
involved but also to employers and the national economy. An employment
discrimination based on ageist assumptions is a huge cost to our
economy, to say nothing of the cost of conciliating complaints or the personal
costs of experiencing discrimination.
Happily I can give you some good practice examples and these are just
three, there are many, many more that I can share with you. But there are
increasingly employers out there that recognize that diversity
is good for business and that having a mix of older workers in their
workforces is very, very important, and they've done a number of things to do
that. So Westpac's Prime of Life program, all about flexible work
hours and arrangements, transition to retirement in their Enterprise Agreement,
mentoring, champions networks and so on. Accor offers a work experience program
for people who are 60 and over. It's like an internship, but people associate
internships with 17, 18 year olds, or apprenticeships. This is for people 60
and over, they are introduced to all aspects of the business and then there's
an interview with HR, no guarantees of a job, but many people who go through that
program are converted into employees. Okay they're big businesses, I'm also
happy to say that there are a number of small to medium enterprises that are
looking at this very, very carefully and they did an age-based,
a very, very careful age-based, analysis of their workforce because they
understood that over the next number of years, very short number of years, they
were going to you lose a major, major section of their workforce. And not only
just in sheer numbers, but in of course in terms of understanding knowledge and
skill. So based on that analysis of their workforce they developed a range of
strategies with the older workers themselves, which was around planning. How
many years did people want to continue to work, what sort of work did they want to
do, how could they best share their knowledge and experience and skills with
the rest of the workforce. They had conversations about how they could
support people's health, transition planning. But also a really close review
of the way they did business and again making some ergonomic changes and
workforce health and safety changes. So as I say there are a number of other
examples, Australian examples, and overseas examples, but in terms of what
the recurring themes are in all these companies it's about flexible work, it's
about support for older people, but most importantly it's simply about
having a conversation with people rather than making assumptions about what they
want just because they hit a particular age. it's also really about understanding
their workforce, their business imperatives. There is no
single one-size-fits-all approach but there is a lot of creativity and good
practice out there and for those of you in the room who are in decision-making
roles in terms of your HR attraction or recruitment and retention policies, I would
invite you to have a look at your own policies and practices, through this
particular lens. To ensure that your workforces are as diverse and strong and
productive and appropriate as they can be. And so to Every Age Counts, our
campaign. So The Benevolent Society is in the very, very, very early days of pulling
together a campaign to tackle ageism. I've talked today about the impacts
particularly of ageism in workforce participation, but this will be a broader
campaign. This obviously will need to be sustained over many years, our initial
planning and thinking is our first decade. So what the program will do is to
challenge ageism and pervasive negative stereotypes and start to change the
existing discourse in our language about ageing and so on and so on. I won't read
through the dot points there, clearly we will not do this alone. This will be a
coalition based approach we will work with other non-government organisations,
businesses, governments, academics journalists, influencers and they're the
people that we are surrounding this campaign with as we speak, and of course
at the heart of this, it'll be driven by older people themselves. There will be
a variety of elements to the campaign, this will not just be a marketing or a
social marketing campaign, although that obviously that will be part of it,
but it'll be a deeply political process as well, we'll be working very hard to
engage our political leadership at all levels.
It'll be underpinned by research and evidence and that's where we've started
and of course popular mobililsation of older people and
members of the community more generally. So if you want to get involved this is
my email address and we would very, very warmly welcomed
your participation, your ideas, your energy, your support. As I say we're in
the very early days of building the campaign, and we would love to
work with you, because our view is that an ageing world doesn't have to be an
ageist world. Thank you.
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