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:
 
  1. Old age is not about 'them': it is about all of us
  2. Older people are individuals and they are, as a group, becoming more diverse
  3. Relationships matter to us whatever our age; we have a fundamental human need to connect with others meaningfully
  4. Older people with high support needs have many assets, strengths and resources that they can also bring to the development and provision of services
  5. Whatever our age or support needs, we should all be treated as citizens: equal stakeholders with both rights and responsibilities
  6. The individual and collective voices of older people with high support needs should be heard and given power
  7. 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

  1. See and treat older people with high support needs as individuals and help them to do the things they want to do.
  2. Build positive relationships with the people you work with.
  3. Look for the strengths and assets each person has and support them to play an active role in the development and provision of services.
  4. 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.