Letter of Commitment
Some excellent news to start the New year. Caerphilly County Borough Council has published a ‘Letter of Commitment’ that pledges them to continue the Age Friendly work. Caerphilly aims to become a member of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Global Network of Age Friendly Cities and Communities.
This is a key milestone in the development of the Age-Friendly Communities concept. Caerphilly Council commits to move to a higher level of participation with residents throughout the Borough. The letter says:
“We will value and listen to the views and opinions of older people, developing the citizen-centred structures and processes of engagement. This approach will enable older people to have opportunities to be involved in decision-making and can actively influence the design and creation of innovation and change.”
The WHO requires that it is the Local Authority that makes the commitment. The Leader of the Council and the Chief Executive have signed this letter.
This is the link to the Letter of Commitment.
Recruitment of Age-Friendly Lead
Unfortunately, the recruitment of the Council’s new Age-Friendly Lead officer was unsuccessful and had to be repeated. As a result, the Age-Friendly Steering Committee is not meeting and the programme cannot make progress. We are pressing our council to get things back on track as soon as possible.
Caerphilly Over 50 started meetings of its Steering Committee again this month. It has been possible to arrange for us to do demonstrations of our Virtual Reality videos in a Care Home, now that Covid restrictions have eased.
We are to meet with councillors to discuss how we might re-start the Lunch Club.
Engagement of Older People
The Chair and Vice Chair of Caerphilly Over 50 continue to get the voice of older people heard by Welsh Government, through the leading roles they play in Cymru Older People’s Alliance – the charity for all 50+ forums across Wales. We have placed significant effort on advocating the engagement of older people, as evidenced in these papers: