Older people and quality of life: better life in residential care
What is the video about?
The video shows older people with high support needs who live in a care home. They talk about what is important in their lives and how they like to be treated.
It is based around the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s (JRF) A Better Life programme. JRF identified seven key challenges to be addressed for older people with high support needs to achieve a better quality of life:
- Old age is not about 'them': it is about all of us
- Older people are individuals and they are, as a group, becoming more diverse
- Relationships matter to us whatever our age; we have a fundamental human need to connect with others meaningfully
- Older people with high support needs have many assets, strengths and resources that they can also bring to the development and provision of services
- Whatever our age or support needs, we should all be treated as citizens: equal stakeholders with both rights and responsibilities
- The individual and collective voices of older people with high support needs should be heard and given power
- We need both to innovate and improve existing models
Social care has a key role to play in meeting these challenges.
What is a high support need?
A high support need is where person has one or more health conditions or disabilities that mean they need support from health and/or social care services to live their lives as they want to.
Messages for practice
- See and treat older people with high support needs as individuals and help them to do the things they want to do.
- Build positive relationships with the people you work with.
- Look for the strengths and assets each person has and support them to play an active role in the development and provision of services.
- Be open to doing things in new ways.
Who will find this useful?
Anyone involved in providing services to older people with high support needs – commissioners, managers, social workers, care workers and educators – and older people with high support needs and their families and carers.