Celebrating our 10th Anniversary at the Global Ageing Network’s biennial conference, 7 and 8 September 2023
Nearly 30 CommonAge delegates from across the Commonwealth travelled to Glasgow, Scotland, to join over 650 of their colleagues from nearly 50 countries to attend the 2023 Global Ageing Network’s biennial conference.
Held in conjunction with Scottish Care and the National Care Forum (NCF), the theme of this year’s conference was ‘Care about Our Future: global symposium for sustainable care and support’.
This event was a unique opportunity for delegates to discuss and debate, learn and share every aspect of aged care and support with their international peers.
(Following images from the official event photographs)
CommonAge at the Workforce summit
As a precursor to the Global Ageing Conference, the workforce Summit, held on 6th September, discussed what are possibly the biggest challenges for the global social care sector: recruitment, retention and training.
Examining ageism in long term care, our Board Director, Dan Levitt, Chief Executive Officer, KinVillage Association, Canada, believed there needed to be change in ageist language and terminology, and there was a need ‘to see people as people, not as residents or fulfilling an ageist stereotype.’
There is a fear of growing older, and older people (gerontophobia), and this is reinforced by other aspects of society, such as ‘an anti-ageing section in the supermarket’ or ‘having senior moment’; even ‘birthday cards are generally ageist’.
When it comes to care settings, older people are still a part of our society, but the location of many care homes are isolated from the community. ‘Care settings should be in communities and integrated with them.’
Our Vice Chair Mansur Dalal put the spotlight on India and the unique challenges it faces: ‘Many people who left India decades ago are returning to retire, resulting in 41 million seniors residing in urban areas,’ he says. However, in terms of senior living options, he believes India was about at the stage that Europe was 25 years ago.
India faces a similar problem to South Africa, in that the primary problem is skilled workers migrate and the non-clinical elements of care aren’t seen as attractive.
The attrition rate for skilled workers with both clinical and non-clinical aged care experience is around 51%. This is said to be because the Indian youth has greater aspirations and increasing employment options.
Read more about the workforce summit in the Care Management Matters article here.
CommonAge at the Conference
The 2-day packed schedule included 7 panel sessions, sparking discussions on the case for reform, human rights, technology, unpaid carers, research, healthy ageing and the need to listen to and empower the people we serve.
Meanwhile 24 workshops gave global insights into building design, technology in care, AI, creativity, trauma informed care, end-of-life and bereavement, governance, leadership, dementia, and much more.
Our Board Director Femada Shamam, CEO, The Association for the Ageing (TAFTA), South Africa discussed The Case for Reform. See the slides from her panel session here.
She also participated in the panel on A Human Rights Approach: Empowering Older Adults Who Need Care & Support.
Josephine Boylan, Chair of the CommonAge Healthy Ageing Taskforce and CEO, Clayton Church Homes, Australia discussed Good Governance Systems that drive Healthy Ageing in Aged Care Homes.
Our Board Director Dan Levitt also spoke at the Active Design how we can all achieve sustainable solutions for Ageing and Social Care panel.
Read more about the Conference in the Care Management Article here.
Presentation slides from the workforce summit and conference can be found here.
Celebrating our 10th Anniversary
As part of our 10th Anniversary celebrations, thanks to support from UKRI’s Healthy Ageing Challenge, as well as our other partners, we offered a bursary for financial support to seven delegates from developing commonwealth countries to enable them to attend the conference. Details of our bursary and the recipients can be found here.
We were delighted to host an informal dinner for partners, delegates and for other people connected with CommonAge who are attending the conference.
At this celebratory event, we also presented the winners of our inaugural Care of Excellence Awards with their certificates and also acknowledged partners and former CEO Klaus Zimmerman for his significant contribution and commitment to CommonAge over the past 10 years.
Finally, with all bar one of our Board Directors at the conference, we took the opportunity to hold regular Board meeting, and also our AGM!
Please do take a look at the photo album on our Facebook page.
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