IF THERE'S one thing an incoming district council needs to prioritise for Whanganui, it's giving more prominence to positive ageing policies.
Work has already been done since the Positive Ageing forum was set up in 2003, but it's a policy that needs nurturing, revising and, certainly, promoting. In a community such as Whanganui, the over-65s make up a sizeable chunk and that number will increase with time, so the release of a book titled Rebooting the Regions takes on a significance.
The author is Professor Paul Spoonley, who specialises in demographics, and the need to focus on ageing populations is highlighted as he studies population growth and decline outside the major cities.
Professor Spoonley says it's a given an ageing population and fewer work opportunities can be a handbrake to any regional economy, especially if the dominant demographic is the over-65s. But he urges taking the glass-half-full approach -- it's about keeping the older generation energetic and contributing their skills rather than writing them off. It also means keeping communities sustainable through adequate healthcare and age-friendly policies.
He supports radical ideas being pushed in places like the Netherlands. Care providers in that country have to provide a kindergarten as part of their aged-care facility to create an inter-mixing of generations. But it isn't about focusing on health for the aged; rather getting proactive and realising older folk are active and energetic people who can contribute a lot. They have a lot of skills, they sometimes have money to invest or have businesses. For Professor Spoonley it's about what regions like ours can do to capture this "silver economy" and what contribution the over-65s can make in an economic sense.
