Member of BSG Executive Committee Freelance Consultant

The 'Kilburn Debates' are taking place at a point where the voicing of older people's interests has become an established social phenomenon. While the mobilisation of older citizens has been a preoccupation for half a century, it has only recently become an objective of government policy (Department for Work and Pensions, 2005). The movement of 'pensioners', for example, with roots dating back to the second world war, intensified during the nineteen-seventies, but it was dealt a major blow at the Labour Party conference of 1996, when its objectives of widening and deepening public pensions provision were largely abandoned by what became the incoming government. Meanwhile, since the 1980s, the rise of 'third-age' organisations has signalled a growth in consumer power, and represented a shift from class influences to those of culture and lifestyle (Jones et al, 2008). Last year the UK government asked the journalist Joan Bakewell to serve as the 'voice of older people', with a remit to counter age discrimination (BBC, 2008). This appointment was greeted with enthusiasm in the media and the voluntary sector, suggesting that, in England at least, a consensus about the kind of older activism - centrist, self-determining, aspirational, and libertarian rather than collectivist - to be encouraged has emerged.

The 'Kilburn Debates' are about the relationship between research and the public. Academic practitioners have the opportunity to talk about what they are doing and how they go about it to an invited audience. The audience – who are older people - have signed up as participants in a monthly programme over half a year and have been invited to take an interest in its development and evaluation. These encounters take place in a resource-centre run by the London Borough of Camden. Each session runs from 11am to 2.30pm with a break for lunch. The whole process is mediated and administered by two British Society of Gerontology members – Mel Wright and myself. The BSG has put up £1000 to fund expenses while the more substantial costs are met by the local authority and, indirectly, the academic employers. It is a modest experiment, albeit a multi-faceted one.

So, how is it going? So far there have been four sessions: an introductory registration; two full presentations; and a short pre-Christmas celebration and stock-taking. About thirty people (users of the centre, members of a local activist network, and people involved in the local authority's advisory panel) have registered. Two very different sessions have taken place. In the first (attended by 28 people) Tony Warnes and Maureen Crane used a narrative approach to reveal the reality of homelessness in later life, and opened up a number of issues about the current policy response. In the second (with 18 people present) Debbie Price conducted a working enquiry among participants about the current assumptions behind the measurement of poverty in later life and the conundrums that arise in practice. The atmosphere has been warm and engaged but not uncritical - as emerged in an informal review at the end of the year.

In practice the sessions have proved to be a hybrid: not a lecture, and not quite a debate. It is the content of the research rather than its design that has aroused most interest. My initial assumption that we would devote some time to introducing research methods has been put to one side, and we have also abandoned the idea of small-scale additional presentations. We have tried four different seating plans, from an informal theatre-style set-up using 'cafe' tables, to a full circle - with a horseshoe being perhaps the most successful. This rather exploratory mode of operation has left a leadership vacuum which some group members have started to fill: one or two have expressed a concern to set the research agenda rather than to learn more about it; others feel we may be replicating the stereotypical talking-shop. On the other side of the equation there is some pressure on the visiting researchers to perform. Given the format, this is probably inevitable, but it is clear that the academics no more want to be manipulated by the organisers than do the older participants.

In my original pitch within the BSG executive I highlighted two objectives for the Society. Firstly, that we ought to do more to advance the case for research, and the public understanding of it. Secondly, that we should establish a presence within the media: here was an initiative which, if successful, would be worth publicising. It is too soon to assess the programme, but it seems unlikely that an appreciation of research will be greatly advanced: a more conventional course of learning directly focused on method and technique would be needed to do that. But the participants are keen to help publicise the initiative in the New Year. It's apparent that some see the Debates more as an extension of their existing activities than as an independent project. This is not an interpretation we have encouraged but it is one we will respect: a focus on how learning from the Debates might be applied in other contexts looks appropriate.

A sense of shared interest and solidarity has been there from the outset among a diverse group of participants. Some resource centre users have known each other for a decade; Kilburn Older Voices Exchange (KOVE) has been going for six years; Camden's Quality of Life Panel first met in 2004. Residence in Camden would appear to offer older citizens an advantage. The Borough is prominent among a group of local authorities who have tried to address the needs of older people systematically, and made financial and political investments to do so: the Kingsgate Resource Centre, where the 'Debates' take place, was referenced by the National Audit Office (2008) to illustrate good practice. Such commitments, which go back at least fifteen years, survived a change of political leadership in 2006, and, while the Council's role in direct provision has been diminishing for some time, it maintains substantial initiatives of its own. A specialist unit, the ‘Older Voices team’, managed at a senior level, links up an older citizens' reference group, the Quality of Life Panel, and several neighbourhood initiatives like KOVE.

The Council faces three challenges in pursuing these objectives: ensuring that older citizens can make an informed contribution to its development of policy; giving full weight to evidence-based practice in its own deliberations; and ensuring that its workforce is well-educated for the tasks in hand. The BSG can support all three areas: research provides a framework for the comparison of different interests and perspectives; a learned society can stand apart from the direction set by central government, opening up space for reflection and independent planning; and, as educators, researchers offer a counter-weight to models of staff training overly focused on competencies, performance management, and targets. Debates' members were sympathetic to the future involvement of staff. We will try to give this aspect of the programme more attention in the coming half-year.

Mel, whose experience with life-long learning groups goes back 30 years, is confident that a very special setting has been established, one that accommodates both the dedicated and the more casually interested. He thinks the format is working, and that the pace of sessions has been good: there is time for the participants to make exchanges with each other as well as with the presenters. And, as he points out, it is evident that the Debates programme has offered many participants a good learning experience – discussion of the revelations about homelessness continued at one table throughout lunch in October! Recruitment has been reasonably inclusive, too. While some members have disclosed their own experience of homelessness and poverty, others have referred to their professional involvement in business, or policy-making, at senior level.

Mel and I hope that by encouraging listening and thinking, we can support a mood of reflection and a practice of informed contribution in keeping with the purposes of a learned society, one which can enrich the work of researchers and activists alike. There is a good deal at stake. Government has invested heavily in neighbourhood renewal, and sought to co-opt local activism into challenging the supposedly institutionalised practices of the professions, and the public sector in general (Department of Health, 2007). There has been a shift towards direct democratic methods – citizens juries, world-cafe style consultations, and unelected working groups of all kinds – at the expense of representative democracy. Those who want to be at the heart of this action, and who can master its mechanisms and jargon, may have a rewarding time, but they may equally find their participation deeply frustrating (Miles, 2008). Others may never get to the table at all (Gilleard and Higgs, 1998). Direct democracy has been aligned with a model of change drawn from the market because the private sector is thought to work in a solution-focused way that eludes public provision (Carvel, 2008). An expectation of rapid institutional change has been encouraged at the expense of a fuller understanding of the underlying mechanisms on which service delivery often depends (Pollitt, 2008, pxii). We hope the Kilburn Debates can contribute to that fuller understanding.

Titling our programme the 'Kilburn Debates' may have obscured that purpose a little. Oppositional debate is an important means of bringing conflict interests into focus, but this is not the model we have followed here, where 'debate' is used in its more diffuse sense. There may be a case for introducing more structured disagreement but it would be unwise to abandon our commitment to informed enquiry. Sometimes when disagreement sharpens during the sessions participants turn to received wisdom and unsupported generalisation to make their case: at those points the original liberal impulse to promote research has come into its own. Nevertheless, we need to respect the discomfort of participants who feel that making stronger statements would bring us closer to action. There are signs already that we could develop some of the skills to draw out a policy agenda from the presentations. That would be a considerable achievement.

References

BBC (09/11/2008) Bakewell to champion the elderly. BBC News website (accessed 28/01/2009): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7718436.stm.

Carvel, J. (30/12/2008) Patients to rate and review their GPs on NHS website . The Guardian. Available online (accessed 28/01/2009): http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/30/doctors-rating-website-nhs.

Department of Health UK (2007) Commissioning framework for health and well-being. London: Department of Health.

Department of Work and Pensions UK (2008) Opportunity age: Meeting the challenges of the 21st century. London: Department of Work and Pensions UK.

Gilleard, C. & Higgs, P. (1998) Old people as users and consumers of health-care: A third-age rhetoric for a fourth-age reality. Ageing and Society, 18(2), 233-248.

Jones, I. R., Hyde, M., Victor, C. R., Wiggins, R. D., Gilleard. C, & Higgs, P. (2008) Ageing in a consumer society: From passive to active consumption in Britain. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press.

Miles, J. (2008) Lessons for older people's involvement: Two examples from an inner London borough. Journal of Voluntary Sector Research, 1(1), 61-74.

National Audit Office (2008) Don't stop me now - Preparing for an ageing population. London: National Audit Office.

Pollitt, C. (2008) Time, policy, management: Governing with the past. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

End of Education and Careers section.