Ageless at Work - Skills for Care

The nature of the implications of demographic, technological and societal change for the adult social
care have been identified by several ‘foresight’ studies. In the UK these included the Wanless Review
of the UK NHS (HM Treasury, 2002) and the earlier Madingley Scenarios (Ling,1998). These UK
studies were reviewed alongside international studies and combined into a series of ‘integrated
scenarios’ by the European Foundation of the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (2004).
The scenario based approach recognises that, whilst the broad nature of the impact of demographic
and other changes can be readily identified, forecasting the scale and precise nature of change is
more difficult because of uncertainties surrounding assumptions around, for example, the nature of
technological change and societal attitudes to health promotion and self-care (Table 16). Briefly, for
adult social care the most relevance components of the vision:
Uncertainties around how many additional years of life expectancy gained will be spent in poor
health;
Societal attitudes to the elderly and the extent to which they are viewed as a resource or a
burden;
Concerned about the sustainability public expenditure on adult social care
The extent to which prevention and self-care get embedded within the social care system
Rising expectations about the nature and quality of care
The nature of technological advances and how readily they are adopted by staff and service users
The extent to which the demand and supply for adult social care workers are aligned.
Ageless at Work: Change workplace cultures, development skills. Good practice report 55