Shifting How We View the Ageing Process: A Policy Report published as part of the SAACY research programme

SAACY is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship funded research programme on ageing that aims to offer a conceptual framework with which to overcome cultural pessimism about ageing and influence policy change. Finding that cultural pessimism about ageing endangers all facets of intergenerational solidarity, shapes perceptions of the worth and value of human beings and directs decisions about care, research and funding priorities, SAACY aims to inform practices and policy development in these areas.

In September this year, we completed the Report of our first Policy Lab, which we had run together with the Policy Institute at King’s in Autumn 2022.

The one-day workshop had brought together academic researchers from a range of disciplines, practicing clinicians, people with lived experience and representatives from the care sector, charities and the policy world to explore how valuable, feasible and acceptable it would be to shift how we view the ageing process.

I would like to thank all the participants for the time, energy and enthusiasm they brought to this vivid debate, and the dedication with which everyone worked towards formulating the Themes for Action summarised in this Report. The Policy Lab indicated that we need policy changes to help normalise ageing as a lifelong process to create more positive attitudes to ageing. Shifts in attitude will drive changes in healthcare practice and encourage wider educational and economic actions to improve lifelong ageing for all.

Having articulated these pathways towards achieving attitudinal change to ageing, the challenge now is to involve the full range of stakeholders to improve lifelong ageing for all. As laid out in the Next Steps section of the Report, in the SAACY research programme, we have already begun using the findings from this Policy Lab to direct our research and actions. The one-day conference Lifelong Ageing (partly funded by the AHRC Impact Acceleration Account Rapid Response Fund), for example, brought together up-and-coming researchers from across the UK to showcase their work to an audience of charity and third sector professionals, sharing their understanding of ageing as a lifelong process and getting feedback from people working on the ground. Our half-day workshop, Co-producing Ageing Research, invited older people and representatives from local and national charities to discuss gaps in ageing research and policy making.

We very much hope that the Report itself will act as a resource and inspiration for all those working towards shifting how we view the ageing process. You can access the Report here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/shifting-how-we-view-the-ageing-process.pdf. Please share it as you think appropriate… and watch this space, as we are currently in the process of planning for a second Policy Lab.

An earlier version of this blog has been published on the SAACY blog pages.