One in three people in the UK is now aged over 50. The sheer volume of the UK’s ageing society is placing increasing demands on public services, such as health and care services. And as a generation their expectations are different: they want new, better and more personalised types of services.
Age Unlimited is exploring ways of generating innovative new public services for people in their fifties.
As people live longer, and continue to be more active later in life, retiring from work can leave them feeling isolated and vulnerable. We want to find out how older people can manage leaving work by making it less of an abrupt departure.
Age Unlimited is looking at work patterns that might include more flexible hours, part-time working or even negotiating a time period to ramp down commitments.
More importantly we want to help older people help themselves by encouraging them to develop ideas on learning new skills, volunteering and consultancy.
Flexible work extension: Experimenting with ways for employers to give staff opportunities to work beyond the mandatory retirement age.
Alternative employment - an Ageing Incubator: Stimulating the development of new labour markets, employment models for older workers and the arrangements that make them work.
Age management and age readiness programmes: Developing programmes based on the latest findings about the effects of lifestyle choices such as diet, work, exercise, housing, finance and friendships to extend quality of life.
Re-framing ageing: To shift popular conceptions of old age and recognise successive periods of ageing and the breadth of activities older people like to undertake.