Blog: Making older people’s voices heard… where it matters

Tony Watts OBE is a partner of the NHS Older People’s Sounding Board, which we facilitate on behalf of NHS England. On International Day of Older Persons, Tony writes about making older people’s voices heard.

The NHS England (NHSE) Older People’s Sounding Board is helping to ensure that users themselves can shape the design and delivery of services that affect their lives. Hopefully, this is just the start…

“Nothing about us without us” has long been the motto of the disability rights movement; but it is just as potent a principle when applied to older people. And it's not just a question of fairness, or democracy, that older people (by far the biggest users of the health and social care system) should be consulted on services that directly affect their lives.

It also makes good economic sense.

I’ve been writing and campaigning in the later life arena for well over 35 years and have seen a lot of changes in that time. Notably in how much those operating the levers of government have been prepared to have a meaningful dialogue with older people. It reached something of a “high water mark” when the last Labour government introduced the English Forums on Ageing. Older people’s representatives from throughout England who had a direct line of communication with ministers and senior civil servants.

We had our say on major pieces of legislation, such as the Care Act and the new State Pension, as well as social care funding. Our lived experiences, something we uniquely could bring to the table, made a measurable contribution.

Sadly, spending cutbacks subsequently killed off that input into government. Which was ironic, because the approach we always took was to develop “what works” approaches to deliver better value for the limited amounts of public money available.

Thankfully, in the NHS England's Older People's Sounding Board, we have a group with increasing visibility that has the same validity, and the same potential to achieve long term positive results... and a better health and care system. Not just for this generation of older people, but for future ones too.

The clinicians and managers that I have spoken to at our events all recognise the defining “unique selling point” of the NHS England's Older People's Sounding Board: that no-one knows what it is like to be old except older people themselves. And, certainly, no one knows what it is like to be an older patient, carer or service user.

Lived experience, and a willingness to share that lived experience of what does, and doesn't, work is the unique currency of the Sounding Board.

The members of the NHS England Older People’s Sounding Board are an astonishingly diverse, exceptionally knowledgeable and extraordinarily articulate group of people. The NHS personnel I have interviewed are in no doubt as to the value of the input they are receiving. And, at a time when constructive criticism and positive proposals are needed like never before.