“Caerphilly We Want” Consultation – Response from Caerphilly 50 Plus

We thought that the Consultation, “Caerphilly Public Services Board: Draft Well-being Plan”, presenting their “Vision” lacked clarity in describing what the residents of the Borough might expect over the next 5 years.

Strategic Direction

The approach taken in drafting the Plan is deficient in that there is:
• No reference to addressing needs of an ageing population even though that is one of the greatest challenges to society according to many commentators.
• No impact analysis of the demographic change in Caerphilly population and increasing numbers of very old people and increasing numbers with dementia and the services and support they will need
• No reference to creating age friendly communities (including dementia supportive communities)
• No mention of the substantial role of carers
• Whilst some of these issues may be implicitly included they need to be explicitly visible, otherwise you are “air-brushing“ ageing out of the plan
• Whilst ensuring a good start to life for children is essential and this may help in later life, there cannot be reliance on this alone as a response to an ageing population. Research shows that a bigger influence on a “good old age” is the life course experiences of an individual and in particular major events that disadvantage them e.g. divorce, early bereavement of spouse, employment history, accidents, disability, financial crisis etc.

Our response to the Draft Consultation can be read in full HERE.

These issues should be addressed in the final published version of the document

The Draft Consultation document is HERE