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2010 OPSO Media Awards Entry forms available on the Media Awards page |
The ageing workforce – at last a real election voice I had a welcome surprise early on Saturday...a phone call from Labor Minister Jenny Macklin to talk about the package for seniors to be announced that lunchtime, initiatives based on the requests that seniors’ groups have make for this election. These include allowing those on a pension who want to do work to earn $6,OOO a year before their earning affect their pension. That is one thing I have found with the present government: they really have listened to seniors during the last three years – and acted on our recommendation...their pension reforms for instance. The ageing workforce initiatives are another another example. The Liberal Party’s solution this week was to offer money to employers to take on senior workers – great ... as far as it goes. The Labor Party’s response to seniors earlier this year was different. They had studied the research carried out by seniors’ organisations and included their representatives in the new Consultative Forum on Participation Policy. This Forum is also made up of the major business bodies related to workforce participation. The Consultative Forum has been working on the answers to seniors’ workplace participation. One of the important answers has been the resource package for employers, to which all Forum members are contributing. The Forum looks for innovation in policies that are based on understanding the needs, motivation, experience and value of older workers, the most productive ways of developing and using this expanding workforce in an ageing society. The changes to the amount seniors on the pension can earn before their pension is affected is another positive response to senior’s recommendations, this time to the recommendations put forward by those of us representing seniors at the Pension Review. The Seniors Package also includes a training package and a long-awaited dedicated Age Discrimination Commissioner. – Val French Breaking the Aged Care Barrier Issues Paper: Seniors agree that ageing in place be accepted at all levels. In discussions about breaking the age care barrier the Commonwealth Bureau of Statistics reveal that only 5-7% of the ageing population end up in nursing homes. We are concerned about the remaining 95%. Concerns
Why is a well funded HACC the key?
Needs
HACC regional boundaries need to be changed based on community interest.
UPGRADE CAREER STRUCTURE
MARKETING OF POSITIVE AGEING HAAC
Individual needs
ACCOMMODATION OPTIONS
Affordable accommodation options should be considered to allow HAAC services to be provided. ENHANCE AGEING
Investigate ways to involve nursing home patients. ISSUES
Because it is financially expedient to do this – health benefits and involvement of the community – Start now! We are the solution – not the problem |
Negative attitudes to ageing – a series Older People Speak Out is to planning a variety of attacks on the community’s negative attitude to ageing and to those who are ageing. This follows the appointment of our president Val French to Wayne Swan’s Consultative Forum on Mature Age Participation in the Workforce. We are doing this in response to the public attention that has been given to the so-called “problems of an ageing society”. We believe the “problems” are more the result of community attitude than inevitable consequences of growing older. This attitude is the inevitable result of business’s constant emphasis on marketing to youth...for which, of course, the older was to blame: we were the generation that went without during the Great Depression and the World War 2 and the reconstruction years that followed. We determined to give our children what we went without. So youth became the plus...and now the older generation is being joined by the baby boomers: we are told that the too, even at 45 are being discriminated against in the workforce. Somehow we built a “give me” society, and our baby-boomer children have continued this “give to youth” society. To begin our campaign against negative attitudes and discrimination we have here the first articles on the Ageing Workforce and Workforce Challenges.
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When is Old? For those of us in Older People Speak Out the word “older” was a deliberately chosen term. . From the moment we are born we are growing older. Being old, though, is completely different. Today, the word immediately marginalises us. Yet once it was not a negative word. It merited respect. So what went wrong? Those who survived the Depression and the Second World War were a generation who had gone without. In the prosperous years that followed, that generation made sure that their children in that Populate or Perish era were given all that they themselves had missed – : education, toys, clothes, and the security of a home. The business world soon realised that under these circumstances, Youth was a huge market. So the Baby Boomer generation was born and bred. Somehow along the way when they moved into the workforce and as our generation grew old, we became marginalised: to be young was to be beautiful, so to be old became the opposite – being old simply got a bad name. Consequently, the value of older workers was downgraded, to the cost of many businesses in the 90’s which made many of their older workers, with all their knowledge and experience, redundant. Thus in a Commonwealth survey in the early 1990’ the over-60–year-olds maintained they were being marginalised by the community simply because of their age. So what is “old”? Is it a matter of the number of years lived or is it a matter of community or individual attitude to those years? Some people are never old, no matter what their chronological age. Some people are old at 50 or even 45. .Some are born old. There are people who set some sort of biological clock – based perhaps on advertising propaganda that links wrinkles with age– and as soon as they reach their set age they say, ‘ I am 60 or 70 and so I am old”. From then on they become really old – they give up. One man I know did wonders in his garden, and even built a swimming pool himself. He always defined 68 as the time when he’d be old. From his 68th birthday onwards he did nothing more. “I am too old” he’d say. On the other hand, a woman in a hostel. and who had heart and sight problems and chronic arthritis defied the medical staff and went on a holiday to Honolulu. There she had a ball, dancing as best she could and just simply enjoying herself. Like another friend of mine who is going blind, she learnt to touch type so she could write to her friends when her sight goes. Yet there are many who defy the years. I know some people, young at heart who, in their late eighties and nineties, are delivering Meals on Wheels. I know doctors who are still in practice well into their 70s, and many people in their 70s and 80s who work long hours as volunteers, or in their own businesses or who look after their grandchildren while the parents work. They never think of themselves as old. In fact, most of my generation simply has not got the time to feel, or to think, old.
By Val French |
Help us end age discrimination Here is an early bird opportunity to act on our new initiative. We are adding a fourth dimension to the OPSO Media Awards by offering two stand alone prizes of $2000 each, both aimed at breaking down discrimination in the work force. The first of these prizes will be for the best coverage in any medium (print, electronic or photographic) that helps break down age discrimination in the 45 to 67 age group. The second will cover the 68 and onwards age group. The official nomination forms for all media awards will be sent out Australia wide in May, but early bird nominations for the two special awards will be accepted from today onwards until the closing date in September. We invite you to enter and to spread the message to your colleagues. Nomination forms can be found in the Media Awards section of this website, or simply send your early bird nomination to OPSO at PO Box 1037 Mt Gravatt with a covering letter. Good Luck! |
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OPSO Granfriends Who a GRANFRIEND is: A GRANFRIEND is a senior volunteer who passes on their skills to Primary School children. These skills are numerous. They can include reading, spelling, tables, creative writing, knitting, sewing, crochet, embroidery, chess and other games, craft work, story telling, dancing, debating and drama. Other skills are welcome. How we organise this: By approaching schools where our volunteers would like to teach. By helping volunteers to receive their blue cards. Why this programme is a success: We help bridge the generation gap by giving schoolchildren a GRANFRIEND. We encourage volunteering among seniors. We keep in touch with newsletters. All our GRANFRIENDS and children enjoy their time with each other and To become a GRANFRIEND phone Blanche O’Connor on 07 33242779 or email granfboc@hotmail.com |
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