The aims were to explore how people can be supported to contribute to their communities; and to identify where better evidence could support action.
As more people are working and caring into later life, the traditional shift towards volunteering may be becoming harder to manage. The Commission on the Voluntary Sector and Ageing recently criticised a ‘collective failure of the imagination’ of charities to harness the talents of an ageing population.
There is a pressing need to uncover ‘what works’ in achieving sustained take up of community activity by more people in their 50s and beyond.
The Centre for Ageing Better is therefore prioritising community contributions. We want more people in later life to be able to take up opportunities to contribute their skills, knowledge and experience to their communities. We aim to draw together and share existing evidence, and build the evidence about promising approaches that can help this happen.
To initiate our programme of work on this area, Ageing Better organised a roundtable in London on 7 March 2016 that drew together participants from academic, public and charity sector backgrounds.
The aims of the roundtable were to explore the evidence for how people can be supported to contribute to their communities; and identify where better evidence could support action to overcome problems.
