CABINET MEMBER REPORT TO THE COUNCIL

Posted By: Pauline Maguire
Date Posted: 01/05/2009

ROCHDALE METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCIL

CABINET MEMBER REPORT TO THE COUNCIL

REPORT OF THE CABINET MEMBER FOR OLDER PEOPLE TO THE MEETING OF THE COUNCIL ON 29TH APRIL 2009

Thank you Mr Mayor for the opportunity to report to the Council the latest developments on various matters relating to the Older People’s 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
Outreach – during the last quarter (Jan – Mar) we had just over 300 new members as well as revisiting existing members – making almost 2,600 members in total since the project started. Since April the requests are still coming in and being worked on as before.

TOPPs – All the TOPPs reps from all the townships met recently to discuss achievements to date and plans for the future. All wanted to continue to meet but don’t want to go down the route of registering as organisations in their own right. It is planned that each TOPPs will review membership and revisit the terms of reference. They will continue to monitor the services that they have commissioned but will probably be more of a consultative group given that they won’t have a commissioning budget. It is planned to work within the township structures to ensure that the views of older people continue to be represented at Township level as well as boroughwide.

Transport – Funding is secured via GMPTE to continue the work and to develop the services. The Volunteer Driver Scheme is going from strength to strength and is about to employ a co-ordinator to manage the service.

Volunteering – All targets achieved. It is planned that a befriending service will be set up in the next few months.

Carers – Number of new carers targets have been achieved.

Website is about to go live in the next few weeks via RMBC site.

PCT funding not yet confirmed so staff contracts/service level agreements have been extended until the end of June to ensure continuity.
The evaluation is underway and on schedule and should be completed by June.


Supporting Age Concern’s Winter Warmth Campaign
We supported Age Concern in holding their winter warmth campaign on 30th Jan in conjunction with Strategic Housing and the Electrical Safety Council. This was a very successful event with over a 100 people attending and a lot of blankets were given out. Another event was held on 26th March at Heywood Civic and we provided free transport to and from the venue for older people. The aim of this event is to raise awareness of people who are suffering from fuel poverty and to ensure that the electrical blankets people are using comply with health and safety standards.

Live Life Conference 2nd March 2009
This year the Joint Health Unit held their Live Life Conference in the new Middleton Arena. There were many activities and information stands at the event. It was a very successful day with over 1300 people attending. We supported this event by providing free transport to and from the event. The transport breakdown from the event is as follows:

Total carried passenger trips 525 (20.23% of attendees)
Volunteer driver scheme enquiries 89
Possible volunteer follow up 8
Passes and permit enquiries 218
Ring and ride enquiries 157 referrals to service 12

Providing free transport to and from events is proving fruitful as we are raising the awareness of the range of transport that is available throughout the borough. In addition to this we received 89 enquiries about the volunteer driver scheme which can provide a huge range of opportunities for older people.

Annual Involvement Day 16th March 2009
We attended the annual involvement day held by the user/carer forum on 16th March. As part of the development of our older person’s strategy, we asked older people to fill in a questionnaire asking them about their priorities and the issues that are important to them as they grew older. We also made links with other people on the day and will follow these through in the development of the older person’s strategy.

Development of Older Persons Website
With the increasing need to have accessible information available and the number of new users in the over 50’s group accessing websites rising we have decided to fund the development of the older person’s website. This is part of the Rochdale Council website and is currently being developed and can be accessed on the following link: www.rochdale.gov.uk/olderpeople.

We recently held a consultation (that was linked in with the service directory) to show what work has been carried out on the development of the website and what other information people would like to see on it. We have requested that some people come forward to be involved in some user testing so that we develop a website which is suitable to the needs of anyone over the age of 50. The site is still in its initial stages and any comments on the development of it are welcome.


Service Directory 2009
We now have a draft services directory. As promised we agreed to call the group back from the 11th Nov consultation and we did this on the 20th March. It was an interesting and informative session where we explained the changes that had been made and it gave the group the opportunity for people to see the new draft directory. The general feedback on the directory was good however there are still some amendments that need to be made. We hope to make most of the amendments suggested with a view to distributing the directory early in early May.

Older Peoples Strategy
The older people’s strategy will be developed on the 7 Adult Care Outcomes that we currently report on. This will streamline the strategy with the current performance management arrangements that are currently in place. We still have to finalise the project team and once this has been agreed we will start looking at the development of the strategy. We have received the executive report and recommendations from the joint strategic needs assessment and will use this assessment to inform the development of the strategy. Work is underway to finalise the project team and board.

Recycled Teenagers
We are now planning for our next wave of events and activities for older people. They will take place on the following dates in the following townships:

Middleton week commencing Mon18th May-Fri 22nd May
Heywood week commencing Mon 29th June- Sun 5th June
Pennines week commencing Mon 13th July- Sun 19th July
Rochdale week commencing Mon 28th Sept- Sun 4th October

The Rochdale week will include a celebration to mark National Older Person’s Day on the 1st October.

Intergenerational Work Streams
Community Fun Day 14 March 2009
We had a fantastic intergenerational day on the 14th March at Castlemere Community Centre. People from throughout the borough attended both young and old we managed to attract people throughout the borough. We had over 600 people attend the event which demonstrates a great achievement for intergenerational work which is the kingpin to good community cohesion. We provided something for everyone; henna painting, Nintendo wii (older people definitely enjoyed playing with the youngsters on this), basket making, dip it flower activities, head and neck massages, dental advice, audiology, heel scanner and the health trainers were very busy. Link 4 Life managed to signpost hundreds of people to free swimming lessons. We also had some healthy eating demonstrations and a taster exercise session and the easy line gym facilities were on demonstration too. Free access to the onsite gym was made available to anyone over the age of 18 to try out the gym equipment. All in all we had a busy event. We provided transport for 156 people and carried out 246 trips.

We also got people to sign in so we will be populating our database with their details. This is part of our ongoing commitment to increase the number of older people and people from BME backgrounds that are on our database. This will be used to invite people to any future events that we are involved in. The event enabled us to reach out to older people who we may have not attracted in the past. We obtained details of younger people too who are interested in taking part in future events. We will be using this event as a springboard for future intergenerational events which are planned around the Townships.

Knitty Gritty In Schools
As mentioned in our last report we have established links with the knitting group at Touchstones and they will be on tour in schools throughout the Townships. They group went to Alice Ingham RC Primary School on Friday 20th March where children and families practiced their knitting skills and got involved in some fun activities.


Councillor Pauline Maguire

Thank you Mr Mayor, I will be pleased to answer any questions from Members of the Council about these or any other matter relating to the Older People’s Portfolio