Sonia says…

There’s an interesting debate on The Guardian’s Facebook page where Helen Walker, Chief Executive of Timebank, points out that an astounding 70,000 volunteers have been recruited for the Games – the single biggest mobilisation of volunteers since the second world war. But the question really is, will this leave a legacy of volunteering that will impact after the games?

Sonia says:

All of us who work in the voluntary sector understand or are learning that those who volunteer their time today, as opposed to those who did so at the end of the second world war, do so for a number of very different reasons.

At the end of the war, when women were not relied on to go to work as well as support their children and families, a whole army of women turned to volunteering. Much of this was the beginning of the voluntary sector we know today, and those women defined the shape of our organisations and saw their volunteering as their career path. Communities were closer knit and people wanted to become involved in their community because they felt a connection and a duty to do so.

Today volunteering is very different. Indeed the roles at the Olympics highlight this. People use their talents and skills for a particular role, often so that they gain work experience or because it brings them into a connection with people with similar interests and passions. Volunteers in the Olympics may, as one respondent on the Facebook page says, be doing this to gain tickets, but others will be pursuing a passion or dream such as drumming at the opening ceremony or just being part of such a big and amazing event.

If that is their reasoning, we have to ask how can we use their drive, passion, skills and interests in less high profile volunteering roles, where the instant gratification is more subtle?

How can we show them that their talents and skills for singing, dancing and drumming can bring immeasurable joy to a small group of people with dementia, even if tomorrow they don’t remember the performance? How can we show them that driving a couple of people to a day centre so that they can see their friends, talk with another person, and connect to their community is even more amazing than taking an athlete down the Olympic lane to compete in their event?

For all of us in the voluntary sector, this is our challenge. But not only ours – it is the challenge of those organising the Games’ volunteers to see how they can channel that energy and connect them back to their communities once the Games is over. Will this happen? Only time will tell.

Sonia Douek is Head of volunteering and community development at Jewish Care and has developed a strategy for the organisation that has seen the growth of volunteers in the organisation reach 2,800 people.

Sonia says…

It’s an inescapable fact, everyone grows old. The over 65’s are the fastest growing age group in Britain and by 2030 it’s estimated that a quarter of the population will be over the age of 65. When I’m 65 is a challenging new BBC One primetime season set to tackle a subject that affects everyone: ageing.

Sonia says :

These programmes should be essential viewing for the under 65s but I suspect that it is only those of us who work with older people, or older people themselves who have taken the time to actually watch them.

Why should this be essential viewing?  Firstly because they highlight the needs that many people over 65 have – financial, caring (whether as the recipient or the caregiver), physical, emotional and the overriding theme of isolation.

More importantly though they show that none of these needs or situations should mean that life is over and we become useless and a drain on our families and society just because our age exacerbates many of life’s challenges.

Last week Jewish Care celebrated the contribution that so many people make to Jewish Care through their volunteering.  The richness of this contribution is in no small way the result of the time and commitment so many older people give to their fellow community members.  Our celebration of volunteering recognises the contribution of people from the age of 16 to those over the age of 90.  Their contribution, whether sharing a skill, helping the teams who work in our office, fundraising, using their expertise to represent others or make decisions, is breathtaking and creates an organisation that is rich and diverse.  From the school boy who provides musical entertainment in a dementia home to our unsung hero who takes the train from East to Central London 3 times a week at the age of 91 so that she can support those she sees as more lonely and isolated than she is – their commitment puts all of us to shame.

If this example could be rolled out throughout our society programmes such as the When I’m 65 series would be unnecessary because we would recognise the value we all can give to others and the part we all should play in ensuring everyone continues to be a valued and respected member of society from cradle to grave.

Sonia Douek is Head of volunteering and community development at Jewish Care and has developed a strategy for the organisation that has seen the growth of volunteers in the organisation reach 2,800 people.

Dementia Patients: The Only Way to Treat Them is to Their Heart’s Desire

Chase McAllister- Olivarius, Freelance Writer

This week, it seemed no good news would come out of Arizona, which on Saturday morning saw a 22 year old gunman open fire on a crowd that had gathered outside a grocery store in Tuscon, killing 6 people, including a federal judge and a 9 year old girl, and gravely injuring a further 13.  His object was the assassination of Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the first Jew to be elected to federal office in Arizona.  Despite early, erroneous reports that the assassin, Jared Lee Loughner, had succeeded in slaying Giffords, who was an ardent supporter of Obama’s health care bill and who narrowly won a third term last November, the Arizona congresswoman is in fact alive – though in critical condition – after being shot through the head at point blank range.

While our eyes our riveted on Tuscon and we pray for Giffords’ recovery, elsewhere in Arizona – at Beatitudes, an elderly care facility outside Phoenix – doctors are also struggling to save their patients’ brains from being ravaged by dementia.  Though their efforts are less dramatic than those being made on behalf of Congresswoman Giffords’ health, they are perhaps more innovative and no less significant.

Margaret Nance’s experience of dementia, the toll it took on her, and the kind of care she needed at first sounds like a cautionary tale.  At 96 years old, Nance was cantankerous, anxious, often opposed to eating, and prone to lose her temper.  Her tenure at previous nursing homes often concluded with her assaulting staff members and fellow patients.  But, writes the New York Times, “when Beatitudes nursing home agreed to an urgent plea to accept her, all that changed.”

‘In Response to My Critics’: The Care Debate

Chase Olivarius-McAllister

Yesterday, we received some extremely interesting responses to my post, “Should We Be Looking to the East for Elderly Care Models?”  You can read the whole thing here, but, in short, I argue that because the UK’s population is rapidly aging, Minister Paul Burstow should adopt policies like South Korea’s “War on Dementia,” not measures like Japan’s Hureai Kippu.

One critic, Helen Parsons, writes that “Mr Olivarius-McAllister’s hostility toward Minister Paul Burstow’s proposal is typical of Old Labour thinking: he rejects market-based solutions to social problems like elderly care, even those that are proven successful, because he thinks the elderly should be entitled to equally sub-standard care.”

To clarify, the idea of the “welfare state” first took shape in the minds of Victorian activists and intellectuals.  Institutions like the Fabian Society, trade unions, and the Labour Party agitated for the adoption of a national minimum wage and a pensions system in the nineteenth century.  Though Liberal legislation enacted between 1906 and 1914 lay the foundations, Britain’s welfare system came of age in the aftermath of the Second World War.  Wartime necessities like rationing and detailed economic planning had gotten people used to the idea that government intervention could be beneficial; memories of the human wastage caused by the Depression also remained powerful.  After so much sacrifice, the country did not want to leave people to the caprices of the market in times of unemployment, ill-health, and old age.

I don’t think that “the elderly should be entitled to equally sub-standard care.”  I think that offering Britons anything less than both care and equality in old age is substandard.  And I don’t think this way of thinking is Old Labour; I think it’s old fashioned.

*****

A second commentator, Elaine Gibbons, rejected my conclusions (and also identified my gender incorrectly.  No offence taken):

‘Going forward, how will we care for our elderly?’ Mr. Olivarius-McAllister provides the most modern of answers to this rather old question: look to ‘the East,’ i.e. Asia, because we ‘the West,’ i.e. Britain and the rest of Old Europe, are in decline.

But the problem isn’t that the UK’s population is aging: the problem is that its birth rate is declining. If British women had more babies, our fortunes and those of the elderly would be reversed.

Should we be looking to the East for our elderly care models?

Chase Olivarius McAllister, freelance writer

Japan is rewarding elderly care volunteers with ‘credits’ for their own care needs later in life and South Korea is waging an innovative ‘War on Dementia’. Is the West missing a trick?

Even today, in a time of recession, the government’s greatest expenditure is not National Insurance or the NHS, but pensions. Britain’s population has aged rapidly in the last 25 years: according to the Office for National Statistics, ‘the percentage of the population aged 65 and over increased from 15 per cent in 1984 to 16 per cent in 2009, an increase of 1.7 million people.’  Meanwhile, ‘the percentage of the population aged under 16 decreased from 21 per cent to 19 per cent.’   The trend is projected to continue, leaving fewer and fewer taxpayers, and ever more retirees to care for.

Right now, Care Services Minister Paul Burstow is encouraging the UK to adopt Japan’s scheme, ‘Hureai Kippu,’ which was first introduced in 1991 as a way to manage the country’s blossoming elderly population and has since greatly expanded.

‘Hureai Kippu’ literally translates to ‘Caring Relationship Tickets:’ volunteers perform tasks for the elderly, like doing laundry or watering plants.  As compensation, they receive credits that they can put towards their own elderly care or transfer to someone else.