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Older people have been let down by governments – now is the time for change
As the general election looms, the main parties are making their pitches to the public. The next government must deal with issue of the UK’s ageing population effectively, warns Jane Ashcroft
Our ageing society is hardly breaking news. But the increasing demand for housing and care for older people does not mean we simply need to provide more of the same.
At Anchor Hanover, we have been talking for some time about the need to evolve as people live longer often with more complex needs. But that’s not all that’s changing.
Post-war immigration, changing attitudes towards sexuality and life expectancy increases – particularly among men – are among a number of factors increasing the diversity of older generations. And catering (both literally and figuratively) for those wide-ranging needs and demands in our housing and care homes means we have been working hard on equality, diversity and inclusion among our colleagues.
Providing a welcoming and understanding environment will attract a more diverse range of residents, and ensuring a diverse colleague base will be key to helping us understand the services residents want and need.
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We set out some clear commitments to strengthening our equality, diversity and inclusion practices in our business plan, which we published back in April. And in August, we appointed our first equality, diversity and inclusion manager to ensure a permanent strategic focus.
To help the manager develop and deliver the agenda, we are also supporting the growth of a number of colleague networks. These will be key to providing peer-to-peer support and helping identify areas where Anchor Hanover could improve.
The networks have, for example, helped to drive up our collection of diversity data and prompted us to introduce the use of subtitles as standard on important videos for an internal audience.
One area we identified was the lack of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) colleagues in senior manager positions.
We have therefore developed a pilot BAME leadership development programme, which launched this month.
This includes face-to-face workshops delivered by charity Skills for Care and participants are being partnered with a senior business leader as part of a ‘reverse mentoring’ programme.
Through this we hope to identify potential barriers to progressing and, more importantly, ways to address them.
With a largely female workforce, menopause is a significant issue for many colleagues.
So we are working with colleague volunteers from across the business to discuss what impact menopause may have at work as well as what training and support colleagues and managers may find helpful.
The outputs of this group are currently being reviewed with a view to developing a comprehensive suite of training and support materials.
We’re also working hard to recruit and retain more men into resident-facing roles, reflecting the growing number of older men we provide housing and care to.
“For years now, though, our country’s older people have been let down by successive governments’ failures to actually reform the failing system”
With 7,000 of our colleagues using our internal social media channel Workplace by Facebook, we’re also using this forum to celebrate diversity and generate more discussion around equality, diversity and inclusion, as well as colleague well-being and mental health. And it does seem to be having a positive impact.
In our first survey of all colleagues since Anchor Hanover was formed around a year ago, we asked a range of questions about their experience of working for the organisation.
Encouragingly, 86% of those who answered agreed with the statement “I believe Anchor Hanover respects individual differences”, which is 7% higher than the average for UK companies.
With an election looming, politicians are having the usual debate about which party would most effectively support older people’s care and housing. For years now, though, our country’s older people have been let down by successive governments’ failures to actually reform the failing system. Time and again we have seen fine words on fixing the social care crisis come to nothing.
That too must change. One of the benefits of the growing diversity of older generations, coupled with their growing numbers, is that it will be increasingly difficult for politicians to ignore them.
Jane Ashcroft, chief executive, Anchor Hanover
