Quality of later life: Learning in care settings revisited

Tuesday 10 July 2007
Abbey Community Centre, 34 Great Smith Street

London SW1P 3BU

9.30 - 15.45

Sustaining acceptable standards of quality of life for older people has been a key element of older people's policy expressed by government in Opportunity Age. The Opportunity Age Quality of Life Indicators include access to education. This is also now part of the inspection process for older people's care provision.

NIACE has long maintained that education in later life should be an integral part of those standards. Recent changes in focus of education spending and the latest LSC participation data indicate that:

• older people are less likely to benefit from formal education unless imaginative, targeted and collaborative ways are found to deliver and fund meaningful programmes;
• for older people in care and dependency settings where care, welfare and health issues may predominate, creating and sustaining education programmes is thus even more problematic; and
• the inclusion of learning within inspection procedures creates the opportunity to influence those providers and encourage care providers to develop education programmes with those older people for whom they have a responsibility.

The event is designed to be of interest to a wide range of people which does not include "careers advisers" -- there may, although I doubt it, be an assumption that careers advisers are only for younger people and that learning is not for "the old". The event will certainly be of interest to those careers organisations with links to third age learning.

Email enquiries to Gurjit Kaur gurjit.kaur@niace.org.uk or telephone 0116 204 2833