Ageing Well
The background
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 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation) relative to all other local authorities in England, puts it in the least deprived decile. Where possible, Central Bedfordshire is compared to local authorities of similar deprivation. These are: Bath and North East Somerset, Bracknell Forest, Buckinghamshire, Isles of Scilly, Kingston upon Thames, Oxfordshire, Richmond up Thames, Rutland, South Gloucestershire, Surrey, West Berkshire, Windsor and Maidenhead, Wokingham and York).
Finding the information you need
The summarised data behind the ageing well chapter will be available through a data dashboard. This will include: over 65 population demographics and projections, Life expectancy, Mortality, Morbidity and Disability-adjusted life years, by ward where possible.
Detailed analysis
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:
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
Healthy older age, which details the factors that promote healthy ageing including: screening, immunisation and physical activity, as well those that inhibit it. These include behaviours such as smoking and alcohol consumption, as well as those that are a more result of circumstance including loneliness and poor mental health
Intermediate need. This section focuses on issues associated with ageing that require additional short-term support to adjust to, such as sensory impairment, falls and falls prevention and the onset of dementia
Frail older people, which highlights the services designed to identify and meet the needs of the most vulnerable including: the frailty framework, adult social care, carers and end of life care
Also look out for:
The impact of COVID
This includes both the direct impact of COVID on key health-related indicators, and the indirect impact on wider determinants.
Priority actions
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.
Areas of continued focus
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.