Future provision of care for older people is a major issue across Northern Europe as the proportion of elderly in the population increases.
For the past year in the Highlands of Scotland, and for the past two years in Lulea (Sweden), Bodo (Norway) and the Faroe Islands, an EU Northern Periphery funded research project entitled ‘Our Life as Elderly’ (OLE) has been investigating what older people would like to experience from services in the future.
The Centre for Rural Health in Inverness, which is jointly funded by the University of Aberdeen and the UHI, has been managing the Scottish arm of the OLE project and is hosting a trans-national project meeting in Inverness from March 27-29.
At this meeting, delegates from Scotland, Sweden, Norway, Faroes and Finland will be sharing and presenting findings and discussing how the study will progress. Today (Tuesday, March 28) an invited audience which includes politicians, social workers and representatives from charities and nursing homes for the elderly, as well as the business community, are meeting at Tulloch Castle Hotel in Dingwall to hear preliminary findings from the OLE project.
Gerry King, Researcher on the Highland arm of the project, said: “This is an opportunity for those involved in care of older people to come along and find out the opinions of older people from across the Northern Periphery. The presence of researchers and politicians from the participating Nordic countries offers a great opportunity to find out what is happening elsewhere in the care of older people.”
Preliminary reports of the Healthcare aspect of the project suggest that older people across the Northern Periphery have remarkably similar desires for future services.
Dr Jane Farmer, Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Rural Health, said: “We looked at those aged 55-65 across participating countries and found that few people give much thought to negative consequences of ageing – particularly if they have been healthy. The main thing is that people want to live at home for as long as possible and think it’s important that services are provided by generic ‘caring’ carers rather than fragmented impersonal services.”
Dr Farmer continued: “Where the Scottish findings differed to those of the Scandinavian countries was in highlighting some of the problematic issues for rural people of wholesale service changes planned centrally, for example, replacement of meals on wheels by bulk frozen food was mentioned by several people as having negative consequences for older people for whom social interaction is a key issue in maintaining independent living.”
The implications of policy changes such as funding to purchase personal care and of having to fund residential care were raised as problematical.
A key aspect of the Scottish arm of the project, that was not examined in the other countries, was the provision of care and support by older people to each other in rural communities in the Highlands. Researcher Gerry King said: “Some people are providing an amazing amount of care to their neighbours in rural villages; an example is one woman who works more than full-time as a volunteer in her community. She can identify more than 10 different activities that she is involved with each week, which include helping a neighbour with personal care. She said to me: “I mean, we’re in the hall that much, sometimes I feel as if I should just take my bed there.”
A further aspect of the trans-national OLE project was to look at the role of relatives in providing care for older people. Mrs King added: “It has been really interesting hearing people talk about the role of their families in looking after them. The people we spoke to said that they wanted their families to be with them and help in some way but were very clear that they did not want their families to be involved in their personal care.”
As well as presenting these and other findings at the conference, delegates will hear Dr Lorna Philip of the University of Aberdeen give an overview of what is known about older people and their living circumstances in Scotland. Leif Wikman, Deputy Mayor of Lulea, Sweden will talk about how OLE project results have informed strategy for older people in his municipality.
Delegates from the Northern Periphery countries will visit a number of care facilities for older people in Inverness and on the West Coast, including the Howard Doris Centre in Lochcarron.
It is projected that by 2031, a quarter of the Highland’s population of 210,000 will be aged over 65 years. The ageing population is due partly to the relocation of the younger generation to other areas and to the arrival of retirees.
Little is known about how the ageing of rural communities will affect the health and well-being of their residents or the demand on existing and evolving services; these demographic changes have important implications for the quality of life of individuals and communities.
The Scottish arm of OLE has conducted in-depth interviews with 55-65 year olds in two small Highland communities asking about care services, needs and wants, social networks and contributions to caring. Health and social care professionals in the communities have also been interviewed.
The study seeks to go on to engage local policymakers in considering how findings could be used in local decisions. Dr Farmer said: “We would like policymakers and others who are interested, to think about the findings of the study and what they mean for important decisions they are making about the care of older people. We still have focus groups to hold in communities and we want to ask policymakers what else they want to know.”
Professor David Godden, Director of the Centre for Rural Health, who is also involved in the project said: “This is an important project because health and care of older people is prominent in the news with the need for decisions and policy about how care is to be delivered. Older people in rural communities may have particular issues in accessing care. This project looks at the rich variety of activities undertaken by older people to help themselves, so it has a positive message. Working with researchers and policymakers from other countries in the Northern Periphery has been excellent in revealing how alike older people’s thinking is, but how service provision may be approached in different ways.“
The project is also supported, in the Highlands by the work of Dr Helen Richards, a Strathpeffer GP, Dr David Heaney, Centre for Rural Health, Philomena deLima, UHI Policyweb and Sheena Munro, Highland Community Care Forum.