From Ageism to Age Equality: Addressing the Challenges ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Provision of Goods, Services, Education and AccommodationIn 2003, approximately one in ten (9 per cent) of the case files under the Equal Status Acts 2000 to2004, which ban discrimination in the provision of goods and services, education andaccommodation, related to the age ground. These involved both older and younger people. Theissues raised included the use of age limits to exclude older people without any consideration givento the particular circumstances of the person involved. They included claims of discrimination inrelation to access to insurance provision, licensed premises and public services.In the case of Jim Ross, Sun Alliance was found to have discriminated against him in refusing toprovide motor insurance purely on the basis of his age. The company did not quote for new businessfor people aged seventy or over. In another case, the Q Bar was found to have discriminated againsta man aged 72 when it refused him access to the bar because of his age.Challenging DiscriminationLegislationDiscrimination can be challenged by our equality legislation. As Richard Baker points out in his paper,we lead the EU with the inclusion of an age ground in the Employment Equality Acts and EqualStatus Acts. This legislation has contributed to positive change in three ways:it provides a means for individuals to challenge their particular experiences of discriminationit serves as a stimulus for employers and service providers to have regard to equality inproviding employment or services to older people64it focuses our attention as a society on ageism and the need to combat this form ofdiscrimination.AdvocacyLegislation alone, however, is not enough. It is important to ensure that there is an effective range ofsupports in place to enable older people to make full use of the protections offered by the legislation.The Equality Authority has a role to play in providing legal advice and representation to claimantsunder the legislation. Criteria established by the Equality Authority prioritise cases that have astrategic impact or an effect that goes beyond the individual claimant. The Equality Authority is notin a position to provide legal advice and representation in all cases under the legislation. In thiscontext it is important that other sources of support are available to claimants.The trade unions play a valuable advocacy role in relation to workplace discrimination. More recentlythe community sector has begun to play a valuable advocacy role in relation to discrimination in theprovision of goods and services. Community advocacy has an important role to play in ensuring thatthe equality legislation makes its full contribution to challenging ageism.Community advocacy could involve older people’s groups in:providing information, advice and support to older people who have experienced discriminationpromoting an awareness of the equality legislation, its coverage of older people and successfulcases among local service providers and employersstimulating debate about the equality legislation, its importance and how it might be evolved tobest respond to the needs of older people.Conference Proceedings
To do this effectively requires adequate resources. It is important that we work together to securethese resources and advance community advocacy as a source of support for older people. It is keyto the effectiveness and potential of the legislation. It does, however, pose new challenges forcommunity organisations and demands innovation and creativity. It could, therefore, usefully providea focus for further debate.Institutional PracticeEquality legislation is an important starting point in challenging ageism. To accompany it, employersand service providers need to change their practice. This change should involve more planned andsystematic approaches to equality with a more proactive approach to including an equality focus indecision-making, policy development and programme design.Planned and systematic approaches to equality ensure an equality dimension within all the systems,policies, procedures and practices of an organisation. Equality should be mainstreamed or integrated intothe human resource, customer service and business planning functions. This mainstreaming orintegration should be built on an equality infrastructure. This infrastructure should consist of five ‘pillars’:equality policies that focus on older people and establish the organisation’s commitment tocombating discrimination and promoting equality for older people as employees and customersequality and diversity training that builds awareness among staff about ageism and how tocombat it, and that develops skills among key staff to effectively manage age diversity andpromote equalityequality plans that establish equality objectives for the organisation and the steps required tomeet these. (Plans should take advantage of the new ‘positive action’ provisions of theEmployment Equality Acts that allow the pursuit of full equality in practice for older people; theyshould be evidence-based, developed on foot of a review of the experience and situation of olderpeople as employees and customers and a review of institutional policies, practices andprocedures)65a designated staff member or wider committee responsible for advancing equality objectiveswithin the organisationfora or meetings that allow for a dialogue between the organisation and older employees andcustomers about their specific needs and how best to meet these.Equality Proofing and Age ProofingThis planned and systematic approach to equality, encompassing strategies to build an equality focusinto decision-making, policy development and programme design, should focus on all nine groundscovered by the equality legislation alongside this specific focus on older people. This is known asequality proofing and age proofing should sit within this.Age proofing involves testing out new policies, new programmes or important decisions for theirimpact on older people and for their capacity to achieve equality for older people. To do this involves:gathering relevant data on the experience and situation of older peopletalking to older people and their organisations about the issues concernedassessing the capacity of the decision, policy or programme to take account of age diversity andidentifying any changes that are required to ensure a positive impact on older people.From Ageism to Age Equality: Addressing the Challenges
Page 1 and 2:
From Ageism to Age Equality:Address
Page 5 and 6:
Introduction1
Page 7 and 8:
Presentations in the Final Session
Page 9:
membership of the Traveller communi
Page 12 and 13:
Opening Address (1)Karen Erwin, Cha
Page 14 and 15:
Opening Address (2)Sylvia Meehan, B
Page 16 and 17:
What is Ageism?Loretta Crawley,Scho
Page 18 and 19: Marginalisation is very often the r
Page 20 and 21: Ageism and Attitudes toOlder People
Page 22 and 23: Table 2: Perceptions of how one is
Page 24 and 25: Fear of crime was identified by ove
Page 26 and 27: Table 7: Forms of less favourable t
Page 28 and 29: Just 4 per cent of respondents aged
Page 30 and 31: Table 14: Personal preferences for
Page 32 and 33: Attitudes Towards Older PeopleTable
Page 34 and 35: Table 18: Responses to Scenario Two
Page 36 and 37: Overall, the data suggests a need a
Page 38 and 39: Postal Survey of AttitudesWe conduc
Page 40 and 41: administration and management perso
Page 42 and 43: Screening and Preventative Services
Page 44 and 45: ConclusionsThe broad aim of health
Page 46 and 47: 42Conference Proceedings
Page 48 and 49: Rooting Out AgeDiscrimination in th
Page 50 and 51: Training EventsTraining events on a
Page 52 and 53: Guide to Auditing Age Discriminatio
Page 54 and 55: Effective Involvement of Older Peop
Page 56 and 57: Combating Age Discrimination 9Liste
Page 58 and 59: 54Conference Proceedings
Page 60 and 61: The Status of Age Equality andNon-D
Page 62 and 63: equired to have adopted the two Dir
Page 64 and 65: necessary to promote awareness of i
Page 66 and 67: Implementing Equality forOlder Peop
Page 70 and 71: Such an exercise, often quite simpl
Page 72 and 73: developed as an integral part of eq
Page 74 and 75: Older people who internalise pejora
Page 76 and 77: When considering the implementation
Page 78 and 79: Richard BakerRichard chairs the ant
Page 80 and 81: Síle O’ConnorSíle O’Connor ha
Page 82 and 83: NCAOPThe National Council on Ageing
Page 84: The Equality AuthorityThe Equality
show all

From Ageism to Age Equality: Addressing the Challenges ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?