Older people (health and wellbeing needs in South Tyneside)

Those at Risk

As an individual ages their risk factors generally increase. However, there are some specific groups / communities where the risks are even higher:

Almost 1 in 5 people of pension age were living in relative poverty in 2019 / 20, following a sharp increase (of 200,000 people) over the previous year. This extends a worrying trend which first emerged in the middle of the last decade and means more than 2 million people of state pension age in the UK were living in poverty in 2019 / 20.
This comes after a long period of widening wealth and income inequalities among people in their 50s and 60s. The net (non-pension) wealth of the richest 20% of people in this age group doubled between 2002 and 2018, while that of the poorest 20% fell by 30%.
The number of people aged 50 to 64 who are not engaged with the labour market in any way (that is, they are neither working nor looking for work) has risen by 228,000 since the start of the pandemic, and the employment rate in this group has fallen by 1.8 percentage points.
The UK state pension is one of the worst in Europe providing just 58% of previous earnings from work - below the OECD average of 62%.11 Those people who have to rely on the pension as a main or only source of income face a bleak financial future.

This digital inequality can be particularly seen for those in mid to later life, with ONS data (2020) highlighting that prior to the pandemic, 32% of those who had never or not recently used the internet were aged between 50 and 69 (over 1 million individuals).

Older people are especially vulnerable to loneliness and social isolation, and it can have a serious effect on health.
Hundreds of thousands of elderly people are lonely and cut off from society in this country, especially those over the age of 75.
According to Age UK, more than 2 million people in England over the age of 75 live alone, and more than a million older people say they go over a month without speaking to a friend, neighbour or family member.
People can become socially isolated for a variety of reasons, such as getting older or weaker, no longer being the hub of their family, leaving the workplace, the deaths of spouses and friends, or through disability or illness.

16% of people aged 65+ in the UK are unpaid carers, equivalent to 2 million people, while 13% of people aged 80+ in the UK are also unpaid carers, equivalent to 440,000 people.

Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people aged 50 to 70 are more likely to be in the poorest fifth of the population in England compared with White people, and that Black people are living on an average of £100 less a week compared to White people.
Despite this, the research also shows that Black men and women in their 50s and 60s are more likely to be working - with White people in this age group three times more likely to have retired - suggesting people from these groups are more likely to be in low paid jobs and/or to have less access to other sources of income, such as pension savings and assets.

As the ageing population continues to grow, the diversity of those requiring support has also increased. We now know that LGBTQ+ people in later life report poorer health than the general population and have worse experiences of care. This is irrespective of whether they're accessing cancer, palliative / end-of-life,3 dementia and / or mental health services.
There is also concern around older LGBT people in relationships in relation to visiting, Power of Attorney or Next of Kin and that their rights will not be respected.

People with learning disabilities are more likely to develop dementia as they grow older according to the Social Care Institute for Excellence. They may develop dementia at a younger age than non-learning-disabled people and they may also experience deterioration from dementia at a faster rate than the general population.

It is now widely accepted that the mental health needs of older people have historically been under-recognised and under-treated. Although the proportion of those affected is broadly in line with other age groups, older people have not been able to access the same level of support.

Older people are often overlooked in discussions about domestic abuse. But domestic abuse can happen at any age. Crime Survey figures show that in 2019 over 189,000 women in the UK between the ages of 16 and 74 reported that they had experienced domestic abuse. The total figure for all ages is likely to be much higher because until October 2021, following a successful campaign by Age UK, domestic abuse data was not collected on individuals aged 75 and over. We also know that older people may face barriers to reporting abuse and there are likely to be many cases of domestic abuse that have not been officially recorded.