Blog: Being the Older People’s Champion in Dundee

Guest blog by Councillor Lynne Short, Older People's Champion, Dundee City Council

The life of a politician is nothing if not varied and interesting. It’s one of the many reasons I wanted to become one. So, when I was asked if I would take on the role of Dundee’s Older People’s Champion, without hesitation I said: “yes”.

Then, as so often happens, my brain started working and the thoughts came rushing in. Upmost among them was the one I am still in the process of answering almost two years on – what exactly is an Older People’s Champion?

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t all that aware that older people needed “championing” at all. All the older people I know are perfectly capable of speaking up for themselves, sharing their knowledge and experience and in many cases more than happy to do that with anyone who will listen!

But then it dawned on me. That’s all well and good in a family or social context, but is that same strong, experienced and powerful voice being heard by the people who run, design and make decisions about services in Scotland? The answer to that appears to be, not as much as it should be, which is where the role of the Older People’s Champion and people like me come in.

Not only do I have a voice in the policy decision making processes of Dundee City Council, but I also have a platform that gives me a chance to help older people’s voices be heard too, at every level.

But in the interests of full disclosure here, I have (just!) passed a certain milestone birthday, and I don’t consider myself to be an “older person” although the UN have other thoughts. I still work, I still have a young person living at home, both my parents are (thankfully) still with us, so what do I know about the experience of going grey and with that fading from public consciousness?

That’s where another aspect that I love comes in. I love listening to other people’s stories. Stories that I want to hear. Stories that I hear on an almost daily basis about the experience of being an older person in Scotland in the 21st century. People talk to me on zoom meetings and phone surgeries, they stop me in the street and tell me things, I pick up stories from colleagues, friends and family.

It doesn't end there, though. We have some more formal structures where I get to interact with older people in an official way. In Dundee we have an active and enthusiastic “Pensioner’s Forum” which exists to advance pensioners’ rights and welfare and to educate and unite them in order to present a collective voice to the authorities on matters affecting retired people. I attend the forum every month to hear that voice and importantly to amplify it where necessary.

I feel that a big part of my role as an Older People’s Champion is simply to round-up the stories I hear so that I can re-tell them on a bigger stage, to a larger, more influential audience, illustrating a wider lived experience that we can use in decision-making.

Trying to ensure that older people’s needs are considered when big decisions are being made in civic Scotland about services is a positive pro-active way of championing older people.

Unfortunately, there is also a “darker side” which brings me to what I think is the other key element of my role as an older people’s champion - raising public awareness of the need to support and protect older people from harm, neglect or abuse.

We live in a fast-moving world where technology is updated what seems like every week and with it the sophistication of the criminals who would wish to steal, cheat and mislead older people. In my role I am able to learn about what is going on in that murky world and as a result raise-awareness of these scams, pointing older people in the direction of help to protect themselves and how to seek recompense if the worst should happen.

Highlighting other forms of abuse, what to look for and how to report it are also crucial elements of the older people’s champion role as I see it.

For me though, these two sides aren’t quite enough to feel like I’m doing it to the best of my ability. I want to keep learning. I may just be making it up as I go along and finding things out as part of the process, but isn’t that exactly what life is about?

Of course, these are just my thoughts and a brief look at how I do it. I see my role in a fairly straight forward way. Being Dundee’s Older People’s Champion allows me to be the pipe through which information flows to and from older people in the city. And of course, when you speak into a pipe the noise is louder at both ends!