South West Age Action Alliance is born… what next?

On 3rd March 2014, LinkAge Bristol in partnership with South West Forum of Ageing

held the first ever South West Age Action Alliance meeting.

Age Action Alliance was established in 2011 to establish strong working partnerships in

order to improve the quality of later life by creating communities where senior people

feel secure, valued and able to contribute to society.

On a national level there are some 600 members of the Age Action Alliance, but there is

huge scope for collaborating on a local and regional level, and both LinkAge and the

South West Forum of Ageing were keen draw on the national best practice to establish a

local network.

Both organisations believe that - by working together, sharing knowledge, best practice,

and pooling resources and ideas - we can achieve far more in tackling real issues.

This inaugural meeting consisted of a brief introduction from Tony Watts (SWFoA) and

Claire Miller (LinkAge), presentations from Sue Jaques on Precious Time (South

Gloucestershire Council), and Nicola Venus-Balgobin from Sense, who talked about the

specific issues of ageing for deaf blind people.

The meeting was then handed over to the attendees and the rest of the time was spent

with the group discussing what they wanted from a South West Age Action Alliance

meeting/network and what they were going to do to make it work.

We were joined by over 40 people from a wide range of organisations across the

southwest and the feedback was really positive with people keen for us to establish a

regular South West Age Action Alliance group so that they could meet with and learn

from other people across the Southwest.

People appreciated the Group work best of all, then the introduction and information

on the next steps. All areas scored at least average and most scored useful or really

useful.

Photographs and videos of the day are available on:

http://www.linkagebristol.org.uk/article/age-action-alliance---south-west-meeting.aspx

Thank you to all those who attended – this is your report!

What can we achieve with a Regional Age Action Alliance?

The thrust of the meeting and the feedback indicates that a strong SW AAA will enable:

A sharing of local knowledge and best practice

More pooling of scarce resources and manpower

Older people will be better able to influence agencies and service providers – to

ensure that policies and services are shaped by them and not imposed upon

them

Older people will have a greater lobbying power

Agencies will be more powerful together, working in partnership, and will be less

inclined to act as rivals

Next steps

From the responses at the meeting and from the review forms received, we are now

going to:

1) Set up a page on the Age Action Alliance website specifically for the South West – this

is now live - http://ageactionalliance.org/theme/south-west-age-action-alliance-

network/

2) Begin to map the different projects that are taking place across the South West so

that we have a transparent picture of what is taking place, where and by who. We are

hoping that this will encourage more joint working.

3) Decide on the best way forward for the local meetings based on the feedback from

the people who attended on 3rd March. We want this to be a useful and meaningful

meeting and will move this meeting forward based on what people say they want/need.

4) Actively encourage more organisations to become involved.

5) Hold another meeting, date to be announced

We are really excited about these developments as we know that together we are

stronger and we can accomplish tangible positive change for seniors across the

southwest.

Those already committed to future involvement include:

Jeanette Roberts, Firstcare South West,

Kris Scotting,KSCC

Martin Goringe, DEFRA

Jan Jones, Bristol Community Transport

Jim Law, Wilts and Swindon Users Network

Brian Warwick, South West Seniors Network

Liz Freeman, We Care and Repair

John Clifford, Royal Voluntary Services

Amanda Whitlock, Independent Age

Sonia Harte, Richmond Village

M Clements, U3A,

Catherine Stevens, Big Lottery

Abby Rakes, Golden Oldies

Nicola Venus-Balgobin, Sense

Mark Baker, Age UK Bristol

Tony Watts, South West Forum on Ageing

Claire Miller, LinkAge Bristol

Possible future speakers include:

Jeanette Roberts, Firstcare South West

Kris Scotting, KSCC

Martin Goringe, DEFRA (research/work on Ageing Population)

Jan Jones, Bristol Community transport

Jim Law, Wilts and Swindon Users Network

Liz Freeman, We Care and Repair

John Clifford, Royal Voluntary Services

Amanda Whitlock, Independent Age

Sonia Harte, Richmond Village

M. Clements, U3A

Catherine Stevens, Big Lottery

Your responses:1 What do agencies want to get out of the meetings?

Find out more about rural services for older people.

Learn about issues and solution, innovation, best practice examples

Find out more about how government can help

Meetings need to be relevant and useful

Opportunity to find out about what others are doing

Need to understand what happens in the South West and where the crossover is

between SWSN, SWFOA and AAA

Digital help to prevent isolation

Issues around people being cared for at home

To network with other organisation so we are more aware of what is available in

community. Each person has a unique solution so knowing what is out there is

valuable

2 What could a SW AAA offer members?

Networking and linkages

Training Awareness

Sharing of local information, ideas and knowledge

Local information and Intelligence sharing

Best practice sharing

Mutual support

Understanding of how services can be made more accessible

Training for staff

Partnership working

Extend mapping work

Ensure older people are able to access services

Awareness of services

Interaction with others working on the ground

Get ideas

Pool resources

Higher profile for member organisations

Better understanding of issues faced by ageing population

For more information on the South West Age Action Alliance please go to:

http://ageactionalliance.org/theme/south-west-age-action-alliance-network/