WHAT KEEPS YOU WELL AS YOU AGE?
SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCES AND IDEAS TO HELP PEOPLE AGE WELL IN MIDLOTHIAN
Calling all citizens of Midlothian!
You are being invited to take part in a research project led by The Glasgow School of Art, in collaboration with Midlothian Health and Social Care Partnership, the British Red Cross and Voices of Carers Across Lothian (VOCAL). We need your views about what it is like to get older in Midlothian and the kinds of support you currently value or would like in the future. The aim is to identify opportunities to improve services and enable positive experiences of getting older.
In the first phase of the project, we will carry out two parallel activities to engage with citizens:
Phone interviews with both people living with frailty and carers;
What Keeps You Well as You Age? greeting cards to collect people’s thoughts and ideas about getting older in Midlothian.
In later stages of the project, we will work with older people, carers, and health, social care and third sector professionals to develop innovation in response to the opportunities and ideas identified. Through this work we aim to improve support for older people in Midlothian and the people who care for them.
You get in touch at the contact details at the bottom of the page to ask for a Greeting Card to be posted out to you, or you can complete the questions using the form below. Images below show how the greetings card folds out to reveal the questions (click to see in more detail).
Answer the questions here:
Your responses will be kept anonymous as the researcher will remove any identifiable information when they are analysed. The research findings may be published in academic conferences or journals, and will appear on our website. You will not be identifiable in any report/publication. This research will also be publicly available through our open access repository.
Background
Within the health and care service, many of the current forms of support for people as they get older are designed for people living with frailty. Frailty is a medical condition related to the ageing process, in which our bodies gradually lose their in-built reserves, leaving us at higher risk of health problems. Not all older people are frail and frailty is not an inevitable part of ageing. There are many services available to support people to overcome age-related challenges, to help people remain independent and keep active, doing the things they enjoy. We are interested in support more broadly for people as they get older, in addition to support for people identified as living with frailty.
In an earlier part of the project, we mapped services for people living with frailty from the perspectives of health, social care and third sector professionals. Through this research, we want to map different kinds of support available in Midlothian from the perspective of older people and carers, and to see what people value now and in the future.
funding
The project is funded by the Technology Enabled Care (TEC) Pathfinder programme which is part of the Scottish Government. The Midlothian Pathfinder project is led by the Midlothian Health and Social Care Partnership. The DHI is a Scottish Funding Council initiative and is a collaboration between the University of Strathclyde and The Glasgow School of Art. It is part-funded by the Scottish Government. DHI support innovation between academia, the public and third sectors, and businesses in the area of health and care.
Further Information
If you are a carer or a person living with frailty in Midlothian and would be interested in taking part in our interviews, you can contact us via the details below to be sent some further information about what would be involved.
If you would like any more information about this project please contact:
Katy Simpson, Katy.Simpson@nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk
Gemma Teal, G.Teal@gsa.ac.uk