Older & Bolder launched a new campaign today, Wednesday 23rd November, called
MAKE HOME WORK - The right to age well at home.

Older & Bolder’s campaign MAKE HOME WORK highlights  the obstacles faced by people – older people,  people with chronic illnesses, people with disabilities  - who want to live well at home and who need support to do so.  The campaign calls for:

• older people to be recognised and supported as active managers of their own health.
• clarity around entitlements to key supports like Home Help, respite and Home Care Packages.
• the protection of funding to existing community care.
• the development of effective primary care in the community, integrated with acute hospital services and step-down facilities.
• the recognition - and safeguarding - of an adequate income, local transport and vibrant community activity as real health inputs not expendable luxuries.
• the publication of an ambitious National Positive Ageing Strategy as a vehicle to make ageing well at home a real option.

During the first six months of 2011, Older & Bolder met hundreds of older people at our Forums on Health and Social care.  The clear message from those discussions was that health is about more than medicine alone.  Older people place a high value on access to GP, primary care and hospital services.  But older people also shared their broad understanding about what is needed to age well at home: accessible local transport, a secure income, involvement in vibrant community and voluntary groups, and clarity about the right – when illness occurs – to supports in the home and community.

Patricia Conboy Director of Older & Bolder said, “A change is needed in how we think about older people. As President Michael D. Higgins has so eloquently said, the following years will be an opportunity for transformation in Ireland. ‘We are on the threshold of a new era for Ireland and Irish people...’ His Presidency heralds a new era I believe for older people and the manner in which they have been perceived. We now have a huge opportunity to transform how we support each other as we age.”

Ms Conboy added, “We urgently need to change how older people are seen. Older & Bolder know from experience that older people are active participants in relation to their own health and well-being. Older people’s voices must now be listened to and this reality recognised.  They are active in their own regard and contribute enormously to families and communities. Also older people want to plan and to provide for themselves and various eventualities. But home and community supports are available on a discretionary basis.  There is a pressing need to establish the right to care in the home/community and to clarify what one’s rights and entitlements may be.”