FRESH FOCUS ON AGE EQUALITY
By Tessa Harding - Help the Aged
A conference on 17 March marked the first year of the Scrap It! Campaign to ban age discrimination, and looked forward to the second year.
Around 150 delegates heard from the Government’s Women and Equality Unit, the National Pensioners’ Convention, Age Concern and Help the Aged on the need for age equality. Three people gave their own experience of age discrimination, in employment, in health and social care and in local campaigning. There was a series of workshops on employment, retirement, health, the proposed single equality body and the media.
The first year of the campaign was about getting across two messages : that age discrimination exists and that it is wrong. Things have moved on in the last year and there is now much greater awareness, at least among policy makers, that age discrimination is a real issue. In employment, the Government is running its Age Positive Campaign, and in Health and social care, the National Framework commits managers to rooting out age discrimination from health services and treatments.
The Strategy for Older People in Wales, published by the Welsh Assembly, also recognises the damage done by age discrimination and aims to combat it. There is a very long way to go but at least the journey has started in these fields.
We will campaign now to get other government departments to adopt a similar commitment to tackle age discrimination, and take up key examples of discrimination, such as the fact that disabled older people are not eligible for the mobility allowance which allows younger disabled people to pay transport costs.We are also planning a change of focus for the campaign from the negative to the positive - shifting the emphasis from anti-discrimination towards promoting age equality. There is a lot that organisations and services can do now to become more "age aware" without waiting for legislation. They can, for example, check out their policies to see where these discriminate against older people and change them; ensure that any services specifically for older people are of equal quality; monitor who uses their services and find out why; and involve older people in this whole process.
Another message we want to get across concerns the diversity of older people. Older people tend to be seen as "old" first and any and all other human characteristics second. We want to promote a truer picture. We will be working with other age sector organisations to ensure that age takes its rightful place in the Government’s proposed Single Equality Body. We will also be holding discussions with those at the other end of the age spectrum, so we can better understand and support each other.