My report to council

Posted By: Pauline Maguire
Date Posted: 17/10/2008

Thank you Mr Mayor for the opportunity to report to the Council the latest developments on various matters relating to the Older People Portfolio.


Developments for older people are still progressing through two main strands:
· POPPs – Partnerships for Older Peoples projects
· Initiatives linked to the Council’s strategy for older people


POPPs
The number of people who have become members of the POPPS is now 1616 in total

31 new services and activities commissioned by August 2008 by the TOPPs which include –

· Healthy living (e.g. Tai Chi, chair based exercise)
· Dance
· IT Classes
· Carers’ Support Groups
· BME Women’s Luncheon Club plus Social Activities
· Allotments for the disabled
· Transport – volunteer drivers scheme and shopping link

Our flexible transport project has now achieved 10,000 individual journeys from the beginning of the project.

Volunteer Drivers Scheme is progressing well with a good team of 22 volunteer drivers who give time to the service at various times during the week including evenings and weekend. There are both male female drivers. The service is carrying out over 50-6- trips per week currently.


Carers Report
The option of a new Carers Group in the Pennines Township is being investigated.
And we are continuing to reach cares across the borough who were previously unaware of services available to them.

Update on Social Enterprises
Update on the help and assistance that is given to carers who want to start up their own business into becoming social enterprises

Lotus Defence Conflict Resolution and Personal Safety training (in early stages). Topics include -
· An understanding of what you can legally do to defend yourself.
· Essential knowledge of the unconscious signals you give out and how to give the right signals.
· Becoming more aware of your environment and how to avoid becoming a victim. Some secrets of how to use your natural body movements to release an attacker.

Volunteering amongst older people has seen a steady increase during the last quarter with 40 new volunteers and a proportion of the people willing to give their time is over 75yr. These people are assisting numerous organisations to increase their service delivery to services developed for other older people across all the townships.

We have also held a Listening event for POPPS members and carers, where people were very willing to share their experiences of using the POPPS service. We had extremely positive feedback and this information will contribute to our sustainability plan and the development of the service in the future.

The Befriending service laed by MIND which is a pilot project in Heywood New Deal are, for people with early dementia and memory loss is now almost up and running and the first requests for support have been received by this service.

Shopping Link
I am delighted to announce that Rochdale Borough shopping link is now in operation. The Shopping link is a door to door service for people over 60 and people who have mobility problems. It runs a different morning service and afternoon service in each of the Township areas and runs from Mondays to Thursday 9.30am-5.30pm taking people to different supermarkets in the Borough.

Monday to Thursday
· Rochdale- Asda, Morrisons Somerfield (Cutgate), Tesco (Rochdale & Bamford)
· Heywood- Morrisons
· Middleton- Tesco
· Pennines- Co-op & Sainsbury Littleborough,

Friday
On alternating Fridays each area will have services running into Rochdale Town Centre.

A return concessionary fare is £2.00 an adult return fare is £4.00. If someone wishes to book a seat on a journey or obtain any further information they can call 0800 01802333.

Sustainability
A sustainability plan has now been produced. The aims of the plan are –
· To seek funding commitment from statutory partners
· Strong partnership between statutory and the voluntary / community sectors
· Sustainability through capacity building – community development approach
· Training and skills development for older people / carers TOPPs
· TOPPs embedded in local townships
· TOPPs potentially able to attract external funding
· Development of social enterprise and small businesses

Feedback from the end of year review meeting with DoH – June 08

‘We think that Rochdale has the potential to offer invaluable learning and evidence nationally around the greater involvement of older people in the design and delivery of services, and we look forward to working with you on this over the coming months’.

Initiatives linked to Older People’s Strategy.
Recycled Teenagers
I am happy to announce that our three week long events aimed at older people was a success. They took place on the following dates in each of the Townships.

Rochdale Township week commencing 8th September
Pennines Township week commencing 15th September
Heywood Township week commencing 22nd September

We had excellent feedback on the content of the programme which included a wide range of activities and events which suited a variety of needs.

Our intergenerational work was well received. We ran information technology taster sessions which were conducted by an organisation called Digitall. We will be looking into the possibility of working with Digitall in the future. Our digital photography sessions were very well attended too. Our family history sessions held at the local libraries was well received and we managed to increase the number of people attending existing spiral dance and line dancing sessions. Hopefully they will continue with their new interests and link in with existing groups. For our fitter older people our water based Kayaking, indoor climbing and ten pin bowling activities were very popular. People who attended our events, or who saw our publicity material were very positive about what we were trying to achieve and commented on the variety of activities that were on offer.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped in the organisation and success of these three week long events for the excellent commitment and enthusiasm from everyone involved. We will be holding a meeting with the steering group and will start planning for next years events early next year.

Celebrating National Older Person’s Day
We celebrated national older person’s day on Weds 1st October and the start of the review and development of the Older Person’s Strategy. We held this joint event in conjunction with Age Concern and invited partners and voluntary organisations to celebrate the enormous contribution that older people make in shaping our society. We also had a lively discussion about issues affecting older people. We have gained some valuable feedback from people about what they think Rochdale do well for older people, what we don’t do so well and how they would like the new strategy shaped. We have not fully analysed the results yet but emerging headline results from the feedback are:

What we do well: Give older people a voice, improved transport options for older people e.g. free bus passes, POPP’s transport

Areas we could improve on: There were concerns around accommodation issues where people wanted improvements in terms of social care and more independent living.

What we could do better: Better communications and better joint working.

All Party Parliamentary Local Government Group
The findings from the inquiry into the services for older people which Rochdale contributed to have now been published into a report called The Never Too Late for Living report. The findings will be used to inform the revised older persons strategy and future policy developments around older people’s issues.

Joint Strategic Needs Assessment
The initial report from the findings of the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment has been produced. Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) is a process that will describe the current and future health and wellbeing needs of our local population and will inform and facilitate key partners to take action to meet those needs. Rochdale Council and Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale PCT have a duty to undertake a JSNA in partnership with local people and groups. Commissioners and providers will have to demonstrate what action they have taken to address the identified needs. These duties will be assessed in the Corporate Area Assessment and in many PCT and RMBC inspections.

Due to the wide scope of the assessment a phased approach was necessary to tackle the needs of the whole borough. For the first phase older people were chosen as a thematic group. The initial findings are based on research undertaken to collate and analyse data from a variety of sources, many of which have never been used before. Further information about key issues and priorities has been gathered from members of staff and from consultation with older people.
It is intended that these initial findings be widely disseminated among stakeholders in order to get feedback and establish if the main issues around older people have been identified. The engagement process will ask if anything is missing, for recommendations, if anything is currently being implemented to address the issues raised, and what can be done in the short term to provide further insight. We will be linking in with the findings from the JSNA, in order to inform the revised older persons strategy and future policy developments in this area. A copy of the report can be obtained from the JSNA team.

Councillor Pauline Maguire