Older Australians Wellbeing Baseline
As our population ages, effective use of resources will become even more important as demand increases and available resources become more limited. 80% of older Australians are dependent on the pension, however, the number of working aged people to support this continues to decrease.
Funding for services to support older Australians is difficult to attract, many favour a return-on-investment approach to inform distribution of funds, which makes it difficult for services supporting older generations to compete.
The challenges are heightened by the discrimination older Australians experience in the workforce and society. Around 1 in 3 Australians aged between 55 and 64 years say they have experienced discrimination because of their age. The most common types of discrimination include being turned down for a job, being ignored or treated rudely and having disparaging jokes made about their age. Not only does this contribute to a dependence on the pension, but also to social isolation, mental health challenges and poverty; more than 1 in 4 older Australians are living in poverty and older Australians make up 7% of the homeless population. For older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, outcomes are even worse, experiencing poorer health and higher rates disability than other Australians of the same age.
The Opportunity for Change
To address these disadvantages, we need to start with the needs and aspirations of older Australians, and how these differ across contexts. To inform a systematic approach, this research can be coupled with existing research on employer and community attitudes, providing a holistic view of barriers and opportunities to create sustainable change.
To this aim, The Wellbeing Intelligence Network is establishing a research syndicate to produce an Older Australians Wellbeing Baseline. The aim is to make this a multi-year study to continue to track progress as well as inform continuous improvement.
Identify where to direct resources for the greatest impact for the wellbeing of older Australians.
The aim is for the project to deliver actionable insights for stakeholders working to improve the lives of older Australians through providing a profile of their needs and identifying priorities.
These insights will help inform where there are gaps and duplications in services. Where priority factors are not currently being addressed, it will help inform program design and refinement, effective partnerships between organisations, as well as advocacy for what else may be done.
Change the narrative and shift negative stereotypes.
Taking a wellbeing approach to measuring the needs and aspirations of Older Australians takes the narrative from a deficit to a strengths-based approach, where the focus is on building capability and providing opportunity.
As part of this, being able to put data behind the strengths of older Australians and what they contribute to society, will help shift negative stereotypes and perceptions which has been identify as foundational to achieving systematic change.
Provide a baseline to measure progress and evaluate impact.
The study can provide a baseline to measure progress of collection action longitudinally as well as track changes in the needs and aspirations of older Australians over time.
In addition, the baseline can be used to evaluate the impact of individual providers against. This can support organisations to demonstrate their impact, validate or refine their approach as well as hold non-performing organisations to account.
Insights from the Baseline
Commitment from Syndicate Partners
We are asking for each syndicate partner to nominate at least one representative to form a steering group and participate in the following:
Kick off workshop
Measurement Plan workshops (up to 3 X 2 hrs)
Promotion Campaign Workshops (up to 2 x 2 hrs)
Distribution of surveys to partner’s network
Attend for presentation of findings
Review and Feedback of draft final report
Action workshop
