Ageing Well

The purpose of the Ageing Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) section is to support the work of the Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board by summarising key local needs, and services, and providing a series of evidence-based priorities to improve the health of the population of older adults living across Central Bedfordshire (65 years and older). It acts as a useful reference to inform high quality and co-ordinated local commissioning and provision of services shaped to the needs of their users, as well as to inform the wider council and members of the public.¹

It sets out the key needs and issues of the local population, and makes a series of evidence-based recommendations to improve health and wellbeing, and to reduce inequalities. Central Bedfordshire’s overall score for deprivation (using the 2025 Index of Multiple Deprivation) relative to all other local authorities in England, puts it in the second least deprived decile. Where possible, Central Bedfordshire is compared to local authorities of similar deprivation. These are: Bexley, Bromley, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire East, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Merton, Sutton, Trafford, Wandsworth, West Sussex and Wiltshire).

Finding the information you need

This chapter will include further analysis of the factors that impact on the health of older people and details the policies, services and actions developed to address them. This information will be presented in groups according to the level of need, as well as the wider determinants as follows:

A Dashboard including the latest data on: mortality rates for different conditions, dementia, falls and hip fractures, sight loss, vaccinations and social care.

Wider determinants, which includes factors relating to: family, friends and communities, housing, transport, work and employment, money and resources, deprivation, the cost of living and climate change

Dementia. This section introduces dementia, provides a definition and information on the potential for prevention as well as links to local data.

Frailty, which highlights the services designed to identify and meet the needs of people whose bodies gradually lose their in-built reserves, leaving them vulnerable to dramatic, sudden changes in health.

Also look out for:

This includes both the direct impact of COVID on key health-related indicators, and the indirect impact on wider determinants.

These are more specific requirements that are needed to bring about the changes needed to improve health outcomes for the older people of Central Bedfordshire.

These are high level objectives that have previously been identified as priorities and that remain important to delivering better health outcomes for the older people of Central Bedfordshire.