Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:57 pm on 30 November 2021.
Thank you very much for those questions. I'm pleased to say that the ministerial advisory group and the sub-groups that he mentioned are filled with older people who are advising our strategy, and everything we're doing is done in co-production with older people.
The question he asked me was how important it is to campaign for elder abuse, for example. That is one of the strands of our strategy for an age-friendly society. Elder abuse is advised by the group that was set up by the older person's commissioner, who's taken a particular interest in elder abuse. There are specific aspects of elder abuse that we have been looking at, and we have a group addressing that. I think, often, when you think of abuse, you think maybe of domestic abuse and you think of younger people, but we know that there are very few facilities available, for example, for an older woman to go to if she was in an abusive relationship and needed to leave. That is one of the issues that we certainly have to look at. So, yes, the abuse of older people is a key part of our strategy.
On scams, our digital strategy includes an element of safety online, and certainly there are lots of tips and proposals about how you can avoid and deal with scams. And then, I think, finally, about how, at the next Senedd election, will we see if we've been successful, well, there'll be some basic stuff like, for example, will all the local authorities be part of the World Health Organization network for an age-friendly society. That'll be one of the things we can do. And if they are, I think we would say that might be one small measure of success. But I think it would be, basically, how older people feel. As far as we're able to measure it, we will be using the baseline provided by the research that has been done in Swansea University. So, I think we have got a good baseline to work from.