FOR THE YOUTH OF TODAY

Hi,

This is a difficult email to send for me because my volunteer and past professional work is and was based in a care home environment and I continually praise the work of care and support workers who are passionate about supporting the older person in need of more supportive care, in care homes.

I DO understand that whoever wrote this poem (and it may be an older person too) is trying to show the value of the older person now and raise it as a flag for the younger person to follow. The sentiments are absolutely clear and I am not challenging these.

However - it is a good example of how some words used without considering accepted research on language and also without considering stereotypical thoughts can prop up a view in the public arena which promotes stereotypes.

The first part of the poem (in green below) offers a stereotypical view of young people in their teens and adolescence. Is this really true - I know lots of young people of this age who care deeply about the older person, don't have babies before 16 and don't carry knives or kill.
One of the most common statements from older people who were interviewed and/or called into the Welsh Local Government and Welsh Assembly stand at the Wales National Eisteddfod in 2011 in Wrexham said that they were deeply concerned about the future for younger people re - funds to live a good life.

The first line of the second part of the poem talks about 'the elderly'.
The research from Horrocks (1992) quoted in an article way back in 1994 in a journal called Baseline produced by the British Association for Services to Older People (BASE) offered data on what the older person liked to be called.
'The Elderly' was a title that they hated and yet - after all this time - it is still used by medical and healthcare professionals especially in hospitals e.g. 'The Care of the Elderly Units', significant parts of the media - newspapers and TV/Radio, and also by some of the general public.

The wrong language to describe the older person is not challenged as it should be and the age organisations have been ineffective so far in doing this.

I am an older person and have had my pension for 5 years. I proud to be an older woman, but I do not consider that I am one of 'the elderly'. I am an individual not part of a homogenous group and I did not contribute to making parachutes although my Mum might have and my Dad, who is still alive age 95 did fight in the 1939 war and really suffered as a prisoner of war.
I really value talking with and listening to the views of the younger person and in Wales our intergenerational projects are of great pride to the nation.

Please everyone have a look at the Beth Johnson Foundation and the Intergenerational Centre for Wales where some tremendous work is being undertaken to bring generations of people together and tackle stereotypes.
Also have a look at the Older People Commissioner for Wales website as there is lots of new ideas, projects and thoughts being put into action.

Finally, I am anxious that I am not offending anyone directly but trying hard to explain personally what it means to be described as 'the elderly' and how as a committed network we can change attitudes by first addressing the language that we and other people use.

With best wishes,

Lorraine Morgan

I'm sorry that the poem upset you. Yes it does seem like I stereotyped the younger generation but its how so many people view them. Newspapers, tv news only ever show the bad....riots,stabbings, attacks ect. The younger generation shopping for someone who maybe housebound clearing a path when its snowed for Mrs Brown clearing the garden for Mr Smith sadly do not make the news.
Yes I also believe there should be lots more shows that promote the good things that the youth are doing.
As for the phrase "the elderly" again its a matter of chose there are so many names ....the elderly, older generation, older people some like Mrs Smith Mr Smith some like their christian name Angela, Stephanie and some may have a nickname like my grandmother "chick"
As I say different people like to be called different things I always address people the way they like to be known.
As you was upset by "the elderly" I apologise to you.

Thank you Donna,
I was not upset but really had to challenge the use of 'the elderly'.
If you read the research around what people liked to be called when they use health and social care services then yes - people like different things and I agree that you should always ask.
However, I was just highlighting generalisms and the particular research concerning the term 'the elderly'
thank you again - it was good of you to reply so quickly.
The poem is still good - just a few words need changing.
regards,

Lorraine

Hi Donna,

'What words upset which people' isn't an area I'm going to get tangled up with here.

But I took your point, as being that the generations who lived through two world wars (your contact seems to be with the second of those), had a much less 'me first and only' attitude than some younger people have - I think you are correct, but I'm not sure that I want another WW2 (not that we could still have one, in the nuclear age) to affect the way people think.

I strongly believe that the elderly, and especially the dying, deserve more consideration than they often receive, and often elderly people are much too 'polite' for their own good,

Best wishes, Mike

Hi Mike,
But we all do need to get tangled up with this, as how people are described is crucial to how they feel, who they are and the attitude that other people may use to influence the way they behave towards them - often by default/not on purpose.
Read the Dignity Workbook written by a group of academics from around Europe (Dignity and Older Europeans project ). Workbook is published by Cardiff university and you can read it online if you use Google. Dr Win TADD is the author and is one of our Dignity Champions in Wales.

So why is there a persistence in using 'the elderly' and 'the Dying' when people on this Network are specifically concerned about it's use.
When Baroness Jane Campbell set up the strong disability alliance I seem to remember an article she wrote about language and attitudes towards disabled people. She was most concerned about the term 'the disabled' and talked about 'people first, disability second.'

Surely describing a person as an adjective (such as elderly, disabled, diabetic, dying, demented, etc.....) is describing them without Dignity - or am I wrong?

I will try and find that article but it is a long time ago and was in an Open University course on Community Care way back in the nineties.

Regards,

Lorraine

Thankyou Mike for your comments.
I totally agree with you that some people are "much too polite".
I have spoken to people that are in pain when I asked why they had not told nurse or doctor some responed with.... I'm not that bad, they are far to busy, I don't like to make a fuss ect.
I have experience of that within my own family (my mother).

Best wishes, Donna

Lorraine, I am concerned with end-of-life behaviour by professionals, especially when the patient is at home - that is rather different from the situation of many people who are vulnerable or 'being cared for in some way'.

'Elderly' and 'dying' can be descriptively accurate in some cases, and in particular failing to use 'dying' as a descriptor of a person who is dying, introduces a huge amount of confusion - getting everyone to understand terms such as 'unexpected death' and how that is currently being wrongly used (because it is often interpreted incorrectly) within Verification of Death protocols, is a major aim of mine.

The problem with many less critical terms, is that different individuals will object to different forms of address - asking people what they would like to be called at the start, would resolve most of those issues (I'm not saying that 'staff behaving differently because someone has been 'labelled as elderly' isn't a problem, because I think it is - but that isn't the same as an individual him/herself not being bothered by being described as elderly, if the person is elderly).

I have a particular objection to phrases like 'DNACPR decisions finally rest with doctors' and 'DNACPR is a clinical decision' because they are legally wrong, and I have a problem with the interpretation of the word 'clinical' - so I agree about 'problems with words'. I also have a problem with 'palliative', and several other terms/phrases.

But in this post, I think Donna was making an entirely different point - and Donna seems to have been doing that, because she agrees with me, I think, in her post at 18:40.

Donna, I think there was something in the just-published CQC report, along those lines (I'm not 100% sure) - I think there was a relative who said soemthing like 'My dad invariably told the staff they had behaved well, but he told me they were not very caring, didn't come when he needed them, etc'.

Perhaps if we Brits were a bit more 'Latin' in temperament, some of these issues would come to the forefront more strongly ? The combination of patients being unwell and perhaps feeling vulnerable, and reservation and politeness, probably impedes feedback to nurses, etc !

Further to my post after Lorraine's comments, one crucial aspec tof life in general and some aspects of healthcare in particular, is that unless everyone openly talks to each other, and honestly 'says what I'm thinking', it is almost impossible to understand other people's perspectives.

Within the NHS, when often staff are following procedures and protocols that were written by professionals, this directly leads to behaviours that are 'biased against the amateurs' - it is not the same thing being a relative, and trying to think like a relative, for example: however honestly one attempts to 'put myself in his shoes', the more his role and your own role differ, the less well you properly understand the other person's perspective. This gets trickier when professioanls are following 'rules' and people such as relatives are following 'instinct' - it is all quite complex.

It is similar to those clinicians who, never having personally had a bad attack of flu, seem to suggest that the flu 'is like a bad cold' - they change their mind, once they have had a bad attack of flu themself !

I love the poem. It doesn't upset me at all, it's blunt and straight to the point. Being quite young myself (19) I can say that I agree. The young of today. the society of today - is crazy! Absolutely! Children of today don't know how easy they have it, they don't know the meaning of respect. Yes - It's not all of the generation, but it is a majority.