Britain is an ageing society.  Due to improved health services and better diet we are all living longer.  Nationally the number of pensioners now exceeds the number of young people under 18yrs.  Given a low birth rate the proportion of older people is likely to grow.  What is true nationally applies locally here at CDS Co-operatives too.  As the average age of our residents increases, their needs and requirements will change.  So we need to find out what these needs are ie how we can help them and how we can help them to help themselves.  That’s what Co-operation is all about.

With this in mind the CDS Board decided at its October meeting to set up a Working Party to look at the needs of our older residents.  For the Working Party to be successful we need to engage as much possible with the residents and their elected committees. 

In order to work out what should be done in the future we need to find out what is happening on the ground now.  So we will need to find out what CDS and our independent client co-ops are doing at the moment to meet the needs of older people living or wishing to live in our co-op housing schemes.  We need to be sure we are doing everything we can given the limited resources that we have at our disposal.  Also, what we need to agree on what we mean by ‘old’ and how it impacts on housing needs.

We need to look at how we can all become more proactive in knowing and responding to the needs of elderly people in their communities particularly those with disabilities or chronic ill-health.  The budgets available for aids and adaptations need to be looked at and the possibility of obtaining grant funding for them.  Lettings and allocations policies may need to be reviewed.  How do we ensure that everyone has access to up-to-date information about services that are available?  If you have any comments or suggestions could you please send them to me at glyn.thomas@cds.coop