Diaconia ECCB Ageing Populations: the Impact on Organisations.

Diaconia ECCB

Ageing Populations: the Impact on Organisations

Who we are

• The Diaconia is one of the biggest organizations in the Czech Republic providing social and medical services. • In 31 centres and 8 special schools we offer social, medical, educational care. • Diaconia currently operates more than 126 different types of service in the social sphere. Some 1500 employees

and 1000 volunteers are involved in its work.

In fact, this means that during each regular business day, we are providing help (service, caretaking) for 2,000 clients at once!

Diaconia and seniors?

Seniors are the largest group of clients that Diaconia takes care of in its centers. Yearly, repeatedly we provide services for:

3000 elderly in field services – Home Care 150 seniors in ambulatory services – Social Welfare

Institutions 900 seniors in residential services 400 clients in hospice care

What connects the Diaconia and the topic of “active, healthy ageing“ ?

• Demographic research shows that by 2050, seniors older than 65 years of age will comprise almost 1/3 of the whole population. The extending life expectancy suggests that in the near future there will be almost 3 million citizens older than the age of 65 and one million seniors older than 80 years of age in our country, which is significantly more than today.

Facts about „ageism”

Seniors are handicapped compared to the young, they are often called derogative terms (old bloke, greybeard), or perceived as “slow, baffled, inept…” Such behavior is called ageism

Definition of the term „ageism”

Age discrimination

Such behavior is called ageism: senior discrimination is deliberate, intentional and frequent handicap of elderly people because of their age and other aggravating circumstances, resulting in stigmatization and unnatural position of seniors, and denial of their well-deserved rights.

(Vidovičová, Gregorová 2008)

Myths concerning ageing

There are no seniors

Ageing is a process, not a state

Seniors vote, work, and shop

People don’t die of old age

The ageing of the Czech population is not a social problem

Myths concerning ageing

There are no seniors

Seniors do not exist as a single group.

People older than 60 or 65 years of age whom we became accustomed to call seniors and consider as some kind of a closed and homogeneous dull group are a highly diverse grouping of people in our society.

There is the same age (and social) difference between a sixty-year old and an eighty-year old female senior and between a new-born baby and Miss of the Czech Republic at the peak of her career…

Myths concerning ageing

Ageing is a process, not a state

There is not a single exact moment or event that represents a starting point from which we can say that a particular person is old. In reality, our whole life is nothing but an ageing process; and we can say that older people are “young people with an extra few years”.

From a physiological standpoint, we start ageing at the age of 5…

„From the craddle we go towards to the grave“

Myths concerning ageing

Seniors vote, work, and shop

Many seniors remain active even after they officially retire; this concerns approximately 30 % of sixty-year-olds and 20 % of sixty-five-year-olds.

More than half of seniors older than 60 years of age (56 %) provide the families of their children with financial support.

Older people are frequent customers and consumers of a variety of services (food, accommodation, recreation, culture, sport…).

Myths concerning ageing

People don’t die of old age

Although the illnesses rate is higher in older age, we shouldn’t equate old age to illness.

WHO: 2020 – most common disease – mental disorder (young or old people?)

Approximately 1/2 - 2/3 of people who are very advanced in age enjoy satisfactory health. These results are also supported by subjective evaluations of health: only 31 % of men and 42 % of women older than 75 years of age consider themselves in bad health.

Among people between 60 and 74 years of age who live in their own households, there are 84 % of people who are entirely independent of assistance provided by others.

Myths concerning ageing

The ageing of the Czech population is not a social problem

We often see the ageing of a given society expressed via the so-called dependency index that mathematically compares the number of people in a specific age group to another. By far, indexes of economic dependency are the most frequent.

They are (since recently) calculated, for instance, as the sum of the number of people older than 65 years of age and people younger than 18 years of age compared to the number of people in the productive age range (19 – 64 years of age).

Myths concerning ageing

The ageing of the Czech population is not a social problem … but ECONOMICAL!

People who promote the view that considers ageing a demographic catastrophe and social problem use these numbers to support their assumption that given the ratio of age categories, it will become impossible to “provide for seniors”. Provided that we disregard the hidden notion that this approach sees “seniors” as people who are completely inactive (i.e., people who don’t work, don’t shop, don’t provide care, etc., and thus don’t contribute towards the VAT)

The second view: Pay As You Go = young people pay to seniors – economical construct (compare to other retirement systems)

OtevrenoSeniorum.cz – campaign

Based on domestic social surveys almost 1/3 of people over 60 and 1/2 of people over 70 have recently experienced a situation in which someone treated them differently/badly just because of their age.

A typical example is the discrimination of elderly people on the labour market, affecting people in 50+ or even 45 years of age

Main focus: Set by the campaing name Open To Seniors… …What is we want to open? Minds of people, attitude of institutions as well as individuals, public areas – in short, the entire society

Old age is worth more than you think…

OtevrenoSeniorum.cz. Oficial statement

Official statement of the campaign based on public survey (2005-10)

Motto : „People over 55 seem not to exist. You can hardly see them in the media except as victims of accidents or frauds“

The expert guarantee is Mgr. Lucie Vidovičová, PhD. (www.ageismus.cz).

Old Age is the Taboo of Today

OtevrenoSeniorum.cz – microsite

Campaign Open To Seniors – posters 2011

„Old age is the taboo of

today “

Postery OtevrenoSeniorum (2010-11)

OtevrenoSeniorum – site specific events (2012)

„Do they have to be mugged first, before we notice them?“

Instalations?

OtevrenoSeniorum.cz

Special thanks to our partners

Czech Television Czech Radio

Partners and donors

Contact address

Thanks for your attention

Mgr. Martin Balcar M: 739 244 747; E: [email protected]

www.diakonie.cz