My report to Council

Posted By: Pauline Maguire
Date Posted: 23/07/2009

Thank you Mr Mayor for the opportunity to report to the council the latest developments on various matters relating to the older persons 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 two year project has finished and the POPPS team are looking forward to the future now that funding has been agreed.

POPPS has achieved a high profile across all agencies it has been recognised as a key preventative strategy to delivering greater independence and control.

TOPPS The name will be changed to Senior Citizens Forum. One forum in each Township and will meet on a quarterly basis to discuss key local concerns and issues relating to older people within their Township including information from the POPPS outreach worker.

Service Directory
The older person’s service directory has now been finished. This was finalised with the full the engagement of older people. It has been well received and we also launched it at the user/carer forum. We have ordered 5000 copies to be distributed throughout the borough and this is currently in progress.

Recycled Teenagers
We have already had two of our Recycled Teenagers weeks. Middleton took place week commencing 18th May and Heywood took place week commencing 29th June. Our events proved successful with many older people attending the week long events. One of our great successes was our Journey back in time 1940’s event this idea actually came from Heywood pensioners, we had over 350 people requesting tickets for this. We have also linked in with NESTAC to provide a welcome to Africa Karibu intergenerational event to end the week long celebrations in Heywood. We will be evaluating the events as we go along to make improvements for future events. Two more events are planned in the Pennines Township which will take place week commencing 13th July and Rochdale will take place week commencing 28th September. We are still planning events for the Rochdale week which will coincide with National Older Person’s day. We have been in touch with our Forum 50 group to ask people what they would like to see in Rochdale.

Web Site Progress
We are working with the web team on developing the older person’s website. The web site is still work in progress. Information from the directory is to be added to the website. We have drawn up a specification for some new templates for the older people’s website. We need to do some follow up work with Impact to resolve the outstanding problem with the navigation as it is not working as it should. The web team are in negotiation with a company called Tangent/One for the work on the graphics and the Communications Manager is waiting for the go ahead for the technical work associated with the templates. Once we’ve got the go ahead for the template work, we should be able to look at a go live date for the web pages. We are also getting a service user involvement group of older people together to help develop the website. We are hoping to meet with this group before the end of July. The website can be accessed on the following link www.rochdale.gov.uk/olderpeople.

Travel Training
We are hoping to develop a travel training programme in conjunction with Barry Mackleston who works for GMPTE and is based in the POPPs team. Travel training is designed to help people plan journeys and give them the confidence to use public transport. A meeting has been arranged to discuss this further.

Volunteer Driver Scheme
We are hoping to work with Barry on developing the volunteer driver scheme in Rochdale. This has already proved very successful where older people have required transport to various places. In addition to this it will allow older people to utilise their skills and hopefully help some people get back into employment.

Older Peoples Strategy Planning Day
On Weds 24th June we held a planning day for officers and the community and voluntary sector to look at the outcomes for the older person’s strategy. As mentioned in my previous report 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 asked officers to look at outcomes for their service and tell us where they thought things could be improved by other services. We managed to get a lot of information from the day and this will be followed up by the policy lead to drill services down to specific actions.

In addition to this we have been in touch with a BME elders group and are due to consult with them about issues that affect them so that these can be incorporated into the older person’s strategy. We are hoping to do this by the end of July.

Dignity in Care Awards
This has now been rescheduled for October 09 Age Concern are dealing with the organisation and associated publicity for this event.

Intergenerational Work Streams
Our last Knitty Gritty session took place on 6th July 2009 at St Joseph’s RC Primary School. Feedback from Link 4 Life has indicated that the sessions went really well and we hope to develop other intergenerational activities for the coming year.