6. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Social Services: Age Friendly Wales: Our strategy for an Ageing Society

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:53 pm on 30 November 2021.

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Photo of Julie Morgan Julie Morgan Labour 4:53, 30 November 2021

Thanks very much to Jenny Rathbone for that interesting commentary and question. I totally agree with her that we want to see healthy ageing. I think it's really important that we encourage older people to be active. I declare an interest as well, being an older person. Actually, under our healthy ageing strategy, we are funding Nordic walking, tai chi—under the healthy ageing programme. I went on the Nordic walking, which was great fun. I enjoyed it enormously and had no idea the benefits until I actually did it. We've been funding Age Cymru to provide those services since 2007, actually, which does increase activity and is so appreciated by the older people who are doing it. Because it's not only active and healthy—a carbon-free environment would be wonderful—but it also is social. So, I think that in terms of addressing the health of older people, that we can do that, and we are doing that to a certain measure.

In terms of dementia, we know that the number of people who have dementia is certainly either rising or it is being reported more widely, and it is an issue that we have to do what we can to help with. Because, certainly, of the number of people who need to go into older people's residential care, a huge number now suffer from dementia. I agree that we should be able to have people who suffer from dementia using the services that are already there. As the Member will know, there is dementia-friendly training that many of us have undertaken, so I think we have to do all we can to encourage the dementia-friendly training and the work that is done by the Alzheimer's Society to raise awareness. I think the point she's making is that people with dementia should be able to go to, say, a local day centre, not one that is specifically designed for people with dementia. Ideally, I think that would be excellent if that could be done, but, obviously, we need a lot of work on the understanding of dementia, so that people realise that it is possible to integrate. I think that is definitely something that we should work towards.