International Day of Older People – when support is nearby, but still out of reach

International Day of Older People – when support is nearby, but still out of reach.

When we describe a service as accessible, we usually mean that people can physically get to it, or that it’s easy to access for everyone. We think about transport, opening hours or whether the building has a ramp. But for an older person experiencing abuse, the difficulty may begin before they leave home.

This year’s UK network theme for International Day of Older People is “What’s on your doorstep?” It asks us to look at the opportunities in our communities and the barriers that prevent people from using them. At Hourglass, we want the conversation to include people whose access to their community is controlled by someone else. An older person might live within walking distance of a local group but know that attending will lead to an argument when they get home. They might want advice about their finances but be unable to make a call without a relative listening. The services are often there, but using them could have consequences that people never see.

That is a difficult problem to capture in something like a report on how many residents live close to a community facility. Proximity tells us something about access, but it cannot tell us whether someone is free to use what is available. 

It should also make us think more carefully about isolation. When someone stops attending a group, we might assume their health has deteriorated or that getting there has become difficult. Perhaps they have simply decided it is no longer for them. But there is another possibility: someone is making it difficult for them to keep coming.

We should, though, be able to consider that possibility without treating every absence as a safeguarding concern. The point is to avoid settling on an explanation before we have heard from the person themselves. Ageism can get in the way of that. “She doesn’t go out much these days” can sound like an adequate explanation when the person being discussed is 85. We may be less inclined to ask whether she misses going out, or whether staying home is actually her decision. Restrictions that would concern us in a younger person’s life can pass without much comment.

There is a similar problem with the reassurance that someone has family nearby. Many older people have excellent support from relatives. But knowing that a son or daughter visits every day does not tell us whether his parent feels safe with them. Nor does a partner’s presence at every appointment necessarily mean that the older person has been able to speak freely. A relative may arrange an appointment and then answer most of the questions when it takes place. That can be entirely welcome. It can also leave very little room for someone to say that things are wrong at home. If the same relative is the main contact for every organisation involved, an older person may have no straightforward way to ask for help independently. We need to recognise the risk of organising support around a family member without checking that this arrangement works for the person receiving it.

Local organisations cannot be expected to resolve abuse themselves. They do, however, need somewhere to turn when a concern arises. Staff and volunteers should be able to get specialist advice from a service like Hourglass, including on how to respond without increasing the risk to the person involved. Encouraging disclosure carries a responsibility to have a useful response when somebody does speak. For those planning local services, there is a further question about whose experiences inform their decisions. Consultation tends to reach people who can attend a meeting or complete a survey. Their views matter, but they cannot tell the whole story.

Someone whose calls are monitored may never respond to an invitation. A person who relies on an abusive relative for transport may be unable to attend. Reaching them takes more thought than advertising another consultation, and may require working with specialist organisations that understand those barriers.

This year’s theme is an opportunity to look beyond whether support exists locally and examine how people actually reach it. For Hourglass, that includes recognising when abuse is the reason they cannot. A service should not have to wait for an older person to arrive alone and explicitly ask for help before it considers how someone in that position could use it. That needs to be part of its planning from the start.