Building a Society for all Ages
"Building a Society for all Ages", published in July 2009, brings forward a series of proposals to help instil a major cultural shift and help Britain prepare for demographic change which is seeing people live longer lives.
We are acting now to make sure that all of us – children, famililes, communities and service providers – are prepared to embrace the opportunities and challenges ahead.
Key elements of the strategy involve providing support to people to look forward and plan earlier for their longer lives, and making sure that services are suitable when the time comes to use them.
What is in the strategy?
The strategy outlines a number of new measures which include:
- The Active at 60 package and all-in-one cards to provide people with greater opportunities to stay active and involved in their later life.
- Bringing forward a review of the Default Retirement Age (DRA) which had been due to start in 2011 in direct response to a changing economic landscape. It also promotes flexible opportunities including 50+ self-employment.
- Digital inclusion projects to give different generations the opportunity and ability to keep in touch, and a Grandparent's Summit in the autumn to explore what more we can do to assess the needs of changing family structures.
- An interactive one stop shop for helping people planning ahead, to help people in mid-life to make decisions on financial, health, careers and other issues.
- A Good Place to Grow Old programme with a National Agreement to promote ageing issues at a local level, and an innovative service delivery fund to test new approaches to delivering services for older people.
- The new UK Advisory Forum on Ageing for advising ministers on further steps the Government and partners need to take at national level to improve well-being and independence in later life.
The proposals in "Building a Society for all Ages" continue the process of meeting the challenges and opportunities presented by our ageing society. They form part of a public consultation and we would welcome views on them. We are keen to receive responses from local government, stakeholders, employers, the voluntary and private sectors and the general public on how we implement these proposals and what more can be done to reach our vision of a society for all ages.
Detailed response questions can be found on the HM Government website.
- Comment on Building a Society for all Ages (HM Government website).
