Caring for a parent with a terminal illness Palliative care aims to prevent and alleviate the symptoms of illness for people when curative treatment is no longer possible. Care should also address the wide emotional, social and practical needs of … Continue reading →
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A group of intrepid time travelling golfers are holding a Charity Golf Day in support Age Scotland. Participants must use clubs from at least 30 years ago and also dress the part in the finest 1980′s apparel. They were put onto Age Scotland by Daniel's Gran May Kinghorn who is the organiser of Age Scotland member group Duns Senior Citizens. Daniel tells us more
Vintage Golfing gear from Age Scotland’s Charity shops
With less than a month to our event starting, the boys have now all got their sponsor forms and are pinning down family and friends for donations to help support our event and raise as much money as possible.
We have all now rummaged through parents and grandparents garages and wardrobes to find Pre-1980′s equipment and clothing, with lots of Plus4s and Pringle Diamond Jumper lined up to wear on the day.
We still have couple of spaces if anyone is interested in joining us in our old school clothing and wooden clubs on the 5th of April.
Some of the boys have already been out to try there old clubs at the driving range and early reports suggest there could be some fun and games on the day with Pogo Patterson struggling to find the sweet-spot of modern clubs let along wooden headed ones.
More Golf bargains from Age Scotland Charity Shops
If you fancy throwing them a few pound notes and 1/2p pieces, you can support them and Age Scotland here. We look forward to hearing more about and seeing the pictures afterwards….
Find Age Scotland charity shops here.
Older people are bearing the brunt of large cuts in public spending on social care, a new report suggests. The National Audit Office’s (NAO) Adult Social Care in England: Overview study warns that… continue reading Powered by WPeMatico
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Older people are bearing the brunt of large cuts in public spending on social care, a new report suggests. The National Audit Office's (NAO) Adult Social Care in England: Overview study warns that...
People with modest pension savings should be allowed to cash them in when they retire, the chief executive of the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has said. Otto Thoresen said people who have… continue reading Powered by WPeMatico
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People with modest pension savings should be allowed to cash them in when they retire, the chief executive of the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has said. Otto Thoresen said people who have...
Next month, Catharine Ward Thompson, Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the OPENspace research centre linked with Heriot-Watt University, is speaking at the British Academy Big Debate on the body, brain and wellbeing. In this blog post, she takes us through some of the issues she will be raising as she asks, "are our communities – as places – ready for the opportunities and challenges posed by an ageing population so that old age might really offer some of 'the best years of our lives'?"
Catharine Ward Thompson at the first Advisory Group meeting of the Mobility, Mood and Place research project in January 2014. Age Scotland is partnering the research and the meeting was attended by Greg McCracken, Policy Officer at Age Scotland.
Image © John McGonagle
In my research, I'm interested in the potential offered by open space, at all scales, to enable people to be more active outdoors and engage positively with the natural environment. From recent research, such as the ten-year project Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors (I'DGO), I know that this is important across the life course; that getting out and about into oldest age can enhance both physical and mental health and wellbeing and make a real difference to quality of life. I'DGO demonstrated that, if older people live in an environment that makes it easy and enjoyable for them to go outdoors, they are more likely to spend a longer time outdoors, to be more physically active and to feel more satisfied with life. Participants in our study were twice as likely to achieve the recommended levels of healthy walking if they lived in an environment that they felt to be 'supportive'.
As our understanding of the consequences and implications of a rapidly ageing population has grown, much has been done, through I’DGO and other studies, to identify how to address the physical barriers to getting outdoors that some older people encounter. There is better awareness of the need for good design and, importantly, for higher standards of maintenance. For many reasons, not least financial constraint, our neighbourhoods might not meet these standards, but we have good evidence that they should. We know, through the project Go Far, for example, that better maintained footpaths could make a real difference to the incidence of outdoors falls and to the fear of falling among older people.
In my current research project, Mobility, Mood and Place (MMP), I am working with a team of experts from Edinburgh and other universities to look beyond physical barriers to older people getting outdoors, to find out what other factors help make a neighbourhood environment 'supportive'. We are building on earlier findings on aspects of the outdoor experience that make a difference to its quality, such as pleasantness, personal safety and stimulation. We are investigating, through working with architects in training, how older people can play a more active role in the design process and, using mobile neural imaging, studying real-time emotional responses to place. Working with data from the Lothian Birth Cohorts of people in their 70s and 90s, we are also considering the influence of local environments in which people have lived from childhood.
If you would like to hear more about my current and recent research and how it feeds into wider debates about our communities and their readiness or suitability for ageing, please join me at the British Academy Big Debate, The Best Years of our Lives?, at the Assembly Hall (The Mound) in Edinburgh on Tuesday 29th April 2014 at 6pm. The event is free but ticketed (register here). The debate will be chaired by actor, Simon Callow. My colleague on Mobility, Mood and Place, Professor Ian Deary of the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology (CCACE), will also be speaking, as will Sir Alan Peacock and BBC Scotland news presenter and journalist, Sally Magnusson.
