The next Development Studies Association's (DSA) "Ageing and Development Study Group" meeting will take place on Friday, 8th February 2008.

Details of the Meeting:
Date: Friday, 8th February 2008
Time: 12:30 to 4:30 (lunch provided)
Place: HelpAge International, Pentonville Road, London (near King's Cross).

If you would like to give a paper, or simply attend, please email one of the convenors:

Penny Vera Sanso: pverasanso@yahoo.com
Mahmood Messkoub: messkoub@iss.nlpverasanso@yahoo.com
Elisabeth Schroeder-Butterfill: e.schroeder-butterfill@soton.ac.uk

Can we afford to Care? Social sustainability in the 21st Century
30 St Mary Axe, London, 21 February 2008

A conference for people who care! – not just the academics, care professionals, planners and
administrators, but for any individual who might need care, or is a care provider.

As life expectancy continues to increase, will this result in an extension of active life, or an explosion in requirements for care?
The report “ The State of Social Care in England 2005-6” by the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) has graphically highlighted that public service can no longer be relied upon to provide care; more families will have to “provide or pay” themselves. More recently, CSCI has contrasted the cost of care to local authorities with that paid by private individuals.

With most social work and social service departments under pressure, but with significant changes in family relationships, upon which informal care has traditionally relied, who will care for us in our old age? Who will pay the bills?

This Conference is organised by
the International Foundation for Intelligent Living (IFIL).

IFIL brings together academics, providers and other interested speakers to debate this crucial issue. IFIL is a registered educational charity whose stated aim is to provide people with sufficient accurate information for them to make informed decisions.

Themes being addressed by the event:

• the impact of demographic change
• is increased longevity likely to be as an active life or not?
• the role of the family in care provision?
• the role of the voluntary sector
• technology; can it help?
• access, delivery and value of services
• the value of independence in the community
• costs - who pays for what?
• comparison of services across the UK and EU

Speakers include:

• Dr. Clive Bowman, Medical Director, BUPA Care Services
• Julien Forder, Senior Research Fellow, Personal Social Service Research Unit, London School of Economics and Co-Author of the Wanless Report
• Paul Murray, Managing Director, Life & Health Products, Swiss Re
• Imelda Redmond, Chief Executive, Carers UK
• Paul Snell, Chief Inspector, Commission for Social Care Inspection
• Professor Heinz Wolff, Brunel Institute of Bio-Engineering & Chairman of IFIL
• Cathy Galvin, Deputy Editor The Sunday Times Magazine.

We have also invited Ivan Lewis, MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Care Services), Department of Health

Download programme

Personalised care and support: making choice and control a reality for older people and their carers
Date: Wednesday 27 February 2008
Venue: Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, London W1

Choice and control is now becoming a reality for older people as they, or a chosen relative, will have the right to spend cash - worth £8 billion a year - as they choose. How can older people, their families and carers be supported to make the most of personal budgets and exercise real choice and control?

The Putting People First initiative has made £520 million available for personalisation and prevention, focusing on early intervention. But Britain's population is ageing and demographic change is creating specific challenges for health and social care: budgets are under more pressure; the role of social workers and carers is expanding; and older people need access to first class advice, information and advocacy.

Despite a tight settlement in the recent Comprehensive Spending Review, individual budgets have been developed; Partnerships for Older People's Projects (POPPs) are now in the second round; and community services via LinkAge Plus have been expanded. To discuss the current and future adult social care provision, join senior practitioners from the health, local government and third sectors at this major one-day conference.

Speakers include:

Stephen Burke , Chief Executive, Counsel and Care

Mervyn Eastman , Chief Executive, Better Government for Older People

Tony Salter , Chair , UK Older People Advisory Group

Melanie Henwood, Health & Social Care Consultant, Melanie Henwood Associates

Nigel Walker, Senior Commissioning Advisor for Health and Wellbeing,
Health Improvement Directorate, Department of Health

Imelda Redmond , Chief Executive, Carers UK

Paul Cann , Director of Policy, Help the Aged

Hugh Pullinger, Head of Older People and Ageing Society, Department for Work and Pensions

Andrew Booth , Chair, OPAAL

further details: http://www.neilstewartassociates.com/sh237/index.html

Contact Andrew Almond by email at andrew.almond@neilstewartassociates.co.uk
or by telephone on 020 7324 4363

BSA Ageing, Body and Society study group events, University of Reading:

Convenors: Dr Wendy Martin (University of Reading) and Professor Julia Twigg (University of Kent)

You are warmly invited to the following events, both at the University of Reading:
Researching Ageing Bodies: Methods Workshop
Tuesday 15th April 2008
Qualitative researchers will discuss how different research methods, including photography, photo-elicitation, participant observation, diaries, narrative and life histories, can facilitate understandings and insights into our bodies / embodied selves. The workshop is participatory and exploratory.

Re-launch of the Ageing, Body and Society group
Wednesday 25th June 2008
We are delighted to welcome Professor Stephen Katz, Trent University, Canada, who will deliver the keynote address and Professor Julia Twigg, University of Kent, UK, who will deliver a plenary paper. A call for abstracts will be available from February 2008.
For further information please contact: Dr. Wendy Martin
T: 0118 378 5842
E: w.p.martin@reading.ac.uk

Embracing the Challenge: Citizenship & Dementia
Stormont Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 6 May 2008 to 8 May 2008

We are pleased to announce the 1st International Conference of the Northern Ireland Dementia Centre. Entitled ‘Embracing the challenge: citizenship and dementia’. This will take place from 6–8 May 2008 at the Stormont Hotel, Belfast.

We have chosen the theme of citizenship to recognise the contribution people with dementia make to society and the challenges confronting services in responding to the needs of people with dementia and their carers.

http://www.dementiacentreni.org/abstract.asp?id=3

Health in Ageing - Achievements and Potential of Longitudinal Research

The Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (TILDA) (www.tilda.ie) is organising a 2 day conference on the 29th and 30th May 2008 in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (www.rhk.ie).

Further details, including on-line registration will be available from mid February on website www.tilda.ie

Sessions include:

• Rose Anne Kenny, Health Minister
• Nature versus Nurture
• The Inter-personal Spread of Health Behaviours in Social Networks
• Genome wide association for Cardiovascular Disease
• Biomarkers and cardiovascular disease (English Longitudinal Study of Ageing)
• Evolution and Genetics of Ageing (Newcastle 85+ Study)
• The Ageing Brain
• Dementia in the United States: The Aging, Demographics, and Memory Study
• Cognitive decline with ageing
• The complex and dynamic nature of disability in older persons
• Keynote Speaker: What is the Future of Healthy Ageing? (Nun Study) (David Snowdon)
• No Health without Mental Health
• The natural history of late life depression
• Biological correlates of psych well-being
• Cross-cultural studies of late-life depression in Europe and beyond
• Adding new technologies to old surveys Biomarkers in population-based Ageing research
  (Lindau)
• Exploring means of delaying or preventing the onset of age-related macular degeneration

Future Landscapes of Ageing
Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, 20 June 2008

British Society of Gerontology (BSG) Scotland & Centre for Gerontological Practice, Glasgow Caledonian University in association with HealthQWest.

Demographically the world is changing. In the UK the post 1945 ‘baby boomers’ are now reaching retirement age. By 2031 the numbers of over 75s in Scotland are predicted to increase by 75%. The Scottish Executive’s strategy All our Futures: Planning for a Scotland with an Ageing Population (2007) provides a broad ranging approach to this issue.

Inequalities in health, wealth, lifestyle and cultures mean that not all ageing is healthy and this could produce differentials in life expectancy and expectations of health and wealth in old age. With increasing globalization, the future of individual ageing in culturally diverse societies will depend on social, political and economical environments, on technological developments, and on changing aspects of retirement and relationships. It will be important to support the idea of welfare and care and to promote positive values of ageing and later life.

This one day conference aims to rethink how we talk about the futures of ageing and to consider the implications for policy and practice. The conference will examine future landscapes of ageing, drawing on the expertise of older people, academics and practitioners. It will be of interest to older people and all those who work with them– for example nurses, care workers, social workers, doctors, therapists, in the statutory and voluntary sectors; service providers and policy makers, as well as academics and students of social gerontology and gerontological practice.

To help us in rethinking the futures of ageing we shall invite a Scottish Minister with responsibilities for older people to address the conference. Keynote speakers will give presentations on the topics of demography and policy; the older person’s perspective; care and self care; new technologies; healthy ageing; and globalisation and the future of old age.

The two-hour lunch time will include poster sessions at which authors will speak about their posters and a discussant will facilitate discussion around each theme. Thus throughout the day participants will have the opportunity to reflect on the future of ageing and contribute to wide ranging discussions on ageing and later life.

Further details to be announced early in 2008.

Transformations in care for the elderly
Copenhagen, 26 June 2008 to 28 June 2008

“TRANSFORMING ELDERLY CARE AT LOCAL, NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL LEVELS “

Organised by University of Vechta, the Danish National Centre of Social Research (SFI),

University of Aarhus, and the German Sociological Association, Section “Ageing and Society” .

Elderly care is clearly undergoing fundamental transformations. How such transformations are playing out in practice remains unclear, thus necessitating further theoretical and empirical investigation. The conference explores the dynamics and contexts of these transformations through a number of key themes:

• New interfaces between formal and informal elderly care
• Shifting local and national contexts of elderly care
• Changes in elderly care and implications for care workers
• Elderly care, migration and national care regimes

Keynote speakers include

• Dr. Giovanni Lamura (Italy),
• Prof. Caroline Glendinning (UK),
• Prof. Dr. Birgit Pfau-Effinger (Germany)
• Prof. Marta Szebehely (Sweden).

Sustainable futures in an ageing world - BSG Annual Conference
Sheffield, 4 - 6 September 2008

The 37th Conference of the British Society of Gerontology is to be hosted by the University of the West of England, Bristol and the University of Bristol. www.bsg2008.org.uk

The overall theme of the conference is Sustainable Futures in an Ageing World and workshops will cover the following six sub-themes:
• Sustainable communities
• Housing and later life
• Income maintenance in later life
• Families and inter-generational support
• Long term care & community care
• Health and well-being

Speakers:

• Miriam Bernard, Professor of Social Gerontology at Keele University;


• Alex Kalache, Director of the World Health Organizations’s Ageing Program;


• Professor Graham Rowles, Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, University of Kentucky.

Tony Benn will speak at the conference dinner.

Important dates and deadlines:

Submission of abstracts: 30th April 2008

Earlybird registration: Up to and including 15th June 2008

Standard registration: After 15th June 2008

For conference information and enquiries please contact Lisa Sinfield.
University of the West of England
Faculty of Health & Social Care
Glenside Campus
Blackberry Hill
Stapleton
Bristol BS16 1DD
phone: +44 (0)117 32 88487
fax: +44 (0)117 32 88443
email: Lisa.Sinfield@uwe.ac.uk

First ISA Forum of Sociology, Sociological Research and Public Debate
Barcelona, Spain, 5 - 8 September 2008

Demographic ageing and its consequences for our ageing societies and the people living in them have become popular themes of policy reform, public debate, and even TV talk shows. Population ageing has indeed become a global phenomenon - almost all societies worldwide are affected by changes of their population structures, with a decreasing share of younger people and a growing proportion of older people living in them.

This change has implications for our future societies: Fewer younger people mean fewer children and grandchildren, fewer family members and nurses looking after older people in need of care, fewer young workers in the workplace, they may mean fewer people paying social insurance contributions and taxes, fewer people using schools and universities, etc. More older people imply greater numbers of older voters, older consumers, grandparents and great-grandparents, older workers in the workplace, they may mean more older people paying taxes and social insurance contributions, living in poverty and being socially excluded, or studying at university when others retire, etc.

Population ageing is not necessarily apocalyptic or catastrophic for individuals, societies and their social systems - it means a changing balance between older and younger people in society and the challenge of finding new ways of dealing with each other, of communicating between the generations, of supporting each other, of social inclusion and social integration. Ageing can become a risk factor - or an opportunity for realising new potentials.

Demographic ageing also implies changes in international relations, with ageing societies 'importing' younger care workers, who in turn leave behind family members in need of care, or attracting younger workers from disadvantaged regions of the world seeking new opportunities. Furthermore, increasingly individualised life courses, even more so in a globalised world, mean growing "diversities of ageing" - and more diversity in "discourses and debates" about ageing.

RC11 'Sociology of Ageing' wants to provide a platform for these discourses and debates on the diversity of ageing.

For further information contact: Andreas Hoff, Chair of the Programme Committee, University of Oxford, UK at andreas.hoff@ageing.ox.ac.uk

For more information on the conference see: http://www.isa-sociology.org/barcelona_2008/rc/rc11.htm