Older people

The population of Bournemouth and Poole has 20.5% aged 65 and over, which is significantly higher than the national average of 16.3%. This difference is even greater for the very elderly with 3.7% of the local population aged 85 and over, compared with the national average of 2.2%. 

There are a significant number of people with a long term condition and a many of these people will be living alone. Across the conurbation, 39% of the population aged 65+ live alone and this percentage rises to 50.5% for people aged 75 and over. In most cases, the level of support and care required for someone living alone is likely to be more intense than someone who is not living alone.

We have taken the views of local people and professional groups and worked with colleagues in Bournemouth and Poole Borough Councils to agree the joint older people’s commissioning strategy. 

We will be working with the local community to ensure that older people can access information and informal support to remain fit and active in their homes for as long as possible, avoiding the preventable causes of ill health and dependency. When older people do require health and social care services, they should be confident that it will be easily accessible, tailored to meet their individual requirements and effective. We are also working to improve the availability of care in the home and to reduce the number of older people who need to be admitted for hospital care. We have consulted on the older people’s strategy and the following priorities were rated as the top three areas of work, from the long list of 10 priority areas contained within the strategy :

• increasing care and treatment at home through developing integrated health and social care locality teams. This will enable people to be able to stay at home for longer, to reduce the number of emergency hospitals admissions and moves to a care home
• developing a single point of contact for people to be able to make referrals and enquiries
• improving the overall quality of services.

Memory loss and dementia

Memory loss and dementia is one of the long term conditions which has a high local priority for improving the range of support services available. People are being encouraged to go to go to their GP if they have a memory loss to seek an early diagnosis in order to reduce the likelihood of an unplanned crisis when they or their carers are not able to cope any longer.

We have a joint dementia strategy with Borough of Poole and Bournemouth Borough Council. A review of the actions taken during 2010-11 and an action plan for people with dementia for 2011-12 is also available.