Specialist teams seen as answer to old age poverty and loneliness

Poverty-stricken and lonely pensioners should be helped by specialist local teams, according to a new report.

Police officers, community leaders, older people’s charities and council officers were called upon by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) to provide ideas about how to help combat “the epidemic of poverty and isolation in later life”.

Researchers for Age of Opportunity – Transforming the lives of older people in poverty studied projects in the UK and the US before making their recommendations.

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CSJ executive director Gavin Pool said: “In this report we outline how government, communities, families and older people can work together to make later life an age of opportunity.”

The study, sponsored by the charities Age UK and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and carried out by a group of experts on care for older people, warned pensioner poverty is an urgent issue that needs to be tackled now with an imaginative range of reform ideas.

It used one of its case studies in a crime-ridden area of Manchester as a model for its proposals.

The study warned that growing numbers of pensioners are living in their own homes but they are unable to meet repair and maintenance costs.

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“The result is significant housing poverty among older homeowners, especially in the private sector,” it said.

“Currently there are 3.2 million older householders living in non-decent private sector homes.”

The report also called for an end to the universal winter fuel payment of £200 to pensioner households, recommending the poorest older people should be entitled to more, and that the concessionary bus pass should be treated as a taxable benefit and the money saved used to help older people.

Next week, the Dilnot Commission is due to publish its report on the funding of social care in the UK.

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