Challenge to fight ‘wrinkly hands’ imagery
THE VOICES of older people need to be heard at the highest level of policy making, the Yorkshire MP at the head of parliament’s group on ageing has said.
Speaking as revealed how the number of over65s in the region is set to increase by 42 per cent, from 860,000 in 2011 to 1.2m in 2038, York Central Labour MP Rachael Maskell, inset, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Ageing and Older People, said we need to “bring dignity back into the lives of older people” and ensure they are represented in every department of government.
“Unfortunately in politics, older people are seen in a negative way – in terms of pensions and costs of care for example, but their value should be recognised and older people should be viewed as part of a positive agenda, what people are bringing to society,” she said.
“It should be seen as a privilege to support older people rather than what politics sees as negativity.
“We have got our perspectives wrong – that can be seen in social care, where workers looking after older people are among the lowest paid in the country.”
Ms Maskell was appointed as chair of the influential group in July last year, and often uses her previous experience of working as a physiotherapist in an NHS hospital to influence her work and way of thinking when it comes to older people.
“I always had a personal interest in the rights of older people, having been a clinician,” she said. “I believed their value wasn’t appreciated by wider society.
“Then, I tried to take off that badge of ‘older people’ when I was around older people. We are talking about people who have served our country, some of them in the Second World War; people who have raised their families and made a massive contribution to the country – this needs to be recognised.
“That person didn’t have a full voice, and I believe they should. They should be able to make decisions.”
Now she endeavours to see that the rights of older people – and their voices – are included in policy decisions, but she thinks wider change is also needed to see that through.
“Local authorities need the funding to be able to deliver things in their communities. We need a proactive agenda – investment in a ‘public health’ approach to older people. There used to be health visitors visiting older people finding ways of supporting them, people working in the community to identify what people’s needs are.
“No two people are the same. We have to treat everyone as an individual, rather than a date on a calendar.” And that is perhaps most important when it comes to planning for the future, as people live longer.
Ms Maskell said: “We should see it as a positive, more than anything, that people are living longer. But it means that we have to plan for the future economy. For example, in housing, do we have the right type of housing? In the Netherlands, they have facilities that are flexible, so that people, as the age, they don’t have to move.
“In the future, ensuring we have the right workforce to care for growing numbers of older people is going to be a major challenge.
“The Ageing Without Children campaign group, is raising very important points – who will look after those people if those who might presume can, aren’t there?
“If we don’t start looking at these issues, then we are going to come unstuck.” BILL MULROE is busier than ever. Now 75, he runs two charity shops for the cancer fund he manages, takes patients across the country to their medical appointments, and has raised more than £1.75m for hospital equipment in Pontefract, Wakefield and Dewsbury.
In his own words, he refuses to “sit at home and wait for the inevitable”.
He is one of thousands of over65s defying stereotypes of older people, who are helping to keep the third sector in Yorkshire going.
“I’m a massive believer that people should find something to focus on, even if it’s just half a day a week – or in my case six and a half days a week,” he said.
Mr Mulroe, who was last year awarded the British Empire Medal for dedicating more than 25 years to charity work, is vicechair of the Dr Jackson Cancer Fund, based in Pontefract.
His role recently broadened after the fund, which started in 1977, opened two charity shops in Hemsworth and Featherstone.
He opens and closes both stores daily, while balancing organising the charity’s team of volunteer drivers, transporting patients to and from hospital himself, and running all of the fund’s administration responsibilities.
Mr Mulroe said: “Sometimes the phone will ring at 9.30pm and it’s the hospital, asking if we can help a patient get home. I often get asked by the sister, ‘what time do you finish work?’ and I will answer, ‘what time do people stop getting ill?’
“Last year, up until Christmas, I was taking a lady from Normanton to the Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea where she was taking part in a drugs trial.
“For a 9am appointment, I was up at 4am and finished at 10pm.
“For me, volunteering is my way of giving back.
I came out of two brain operations 15 years ago for cerebral abscesses, and recovering from that, I wanted to show I could still do things rather than just sitting at home.”
Mr Mulrow added: “I think it’s absolutely brilliant that after retirement, you can pay something back to society and help people who are worse off than you.” CAMPAIGNERS FIGHTING to change perceptions of how older people are viewed are challenging the media to stop using photographs of “dismembered body parts and close-ups of wrinkles” with stories on ageing issues or later life.
Care consultant Sara Livadeas has drafted in a Yorkshire care home firm to provide
with stock images of real older people, doing “ordinary things” as part of her #nomorewrinklyhands campaign.
The campaign highlighting the use of “dehumanising” imagery began on Twitter around two years ago, with Ms Livadeas, calling out media companies who rely on clichéd stock images.
But it has now stepped up a gear, with Ms Livadeas recruiting care home companies, who have their own stock imagery, to share their photographs with the media. She began by helping out
newspaper, and has called on Anchor, which has more than 150 care homes across Yorkshire, to share its photos with this newspaper.
Ms Livadeas said: “It’s the dismembered body parts that I particularly object to – rather than seeing the whole person, you are led to think of these people as victims, or people waiting to die. It’s a downward spiral of negative imagery that devalues a person.
“People that are old are already far away from mainstream consciousness and if you then see them presented as a pair of woolly slippers you’re less likely to respect their rights and treat them as an equal. It is really gratifying that journalists are taking it on and doing their part in changing this imagery.”
She says it is important not to treat older people as a homogenous group in the battle against our “ageist society”, but also not to go too far to the other extreme.