Sense hosted a roundtable event at The King's Fund in London on 21 February 2013, for an invited audience of policy-makers, commissioners and providers. 

It examined the themes outlined in the July 2012 White Paper Caring for our future (independence, advice and information, quality, dignity and control), and looked at how we could work together to help make these a reality for older deafblind people.

• Research shows that there are currently 222,000 people aged over 70 with dual-sensory loss in the UK.  By 2015 this will rise to 254,000
• Recognition and awareness of the needs of this group is low, and dual sensory loss is often seen as “just part of growing older”
• Not supporting people with these needs often leads to higher costs later on – for older people themselves, and for local authorities and the NHS
• Due to the nature of the disability, this group finds it harder to take exercise, eat a healthy diet, maintain social contacts, get to a GP and hospital appointments, get prescriptions, or read the labels on medication

 In the short videos and transcripts below, some of the delegates reflect on the event: 

Gill Morbey, Chief Executive, Sense

""We know that deafblind people talk about feeling isolated and this morning we've been hearing about loneliness as well, so we know that deafblind people are more likely to feel lonely. And also, some of the solutions, easy solutions to help people stay connected. We've been talking just about taking your time, providing blue plates instead of white plates, improving the lighting....very, very practical things, that can actually keep our elderly deafblind people feeling much more connected, therefore less isolated and also not lonely." 
 

Laura Ferguson, Campaign to End Loneliness

"I'm Laura Ferguson, the Director of the Campaign to End Loneliness, and we've just talked about the difference between loneliness and solitude, solitude being the glory of being alone, while loneliness is the pain of being alone. So that definition starts us off thinking about the scope of the issue, the scale of the issue of loneliness, how it feels to people. And the scale is captured by the simple statistic of 30% of older people feel lonely in the UK. So we're talking about a large number of the population, almost three million people. And one of the impacts that is lesser known is the impact that loneliness has on health. It's been equated to smoking 15 cigarettes a day."

"And that's why we're calling on health and wellbeing boards being set up across England to tackle loneliness as a priority, both understanding it through measuring loneliness and prioritising it as a target within their strategies. But they can't work alone. They have to work in partnership with local voluntary and charity organisations, who actually have their organisations working through activities and services into local people's homes, into communities, and so it's that partnership working, understanding the real issue of loneliness and the impact it can have, as well as really understanding the individual and how each individual will feel the issue of loneliness very differently. All of these aspects are needed to tackle loneliness in older age."

Laura Bennett, Sense

"Hi, my name's Laura Bennett and I'm a Policy Officer for Sense. Just finished the morning, and it's been a terrific morning with lots of buzz and just being joined by so many colleagues from such different organisations which has been great. It's been really interesting to hear about all the things that people have found important about the morning, for example including the small things that people can do that perhaps don't cost very much and are really easy to put in place. And I'm really looking forward to reading all the feedback forms and seeing how we can all work together in partnership for the future to take some of the things that we've heard this morning about dual-sensory loss forward."
 

Roni Hovey, British Red Cross

"Roni Hovey from the British Red Cross, managing health and social care projects across London. Today has been incredibly useful for me as an Operations Manager, because I'm working with a lot of commissioners on developing outcomes for particularly the older population in and around London. I think there's a real sense of partnership working we could get together with Sense and look at developing much stronger, more focused outcomes for older people with dual-sensory impairments. So I'm certainly going to take that back with me, and I'm really keen to embedd awareness and training of my staff and volunteers about supporting people who are coming out of hospital to enable them to be signposted correctly in the future."
 

Steve Smith, WRVS

"I'm delighted to be at this morning's event at Sense on dual-sensory loss. It's been enlightening this morning to hear how by screening and understanding the wants and needs of older people we can better improve their lives, and I'm sure that there's something here for WRVS to learn from."
 

Tom Thorpe, British Geriatrics Society

"Hi, I'm Tom Thorpe from the British Geriatrics Society. I think today's conference is really important, it's addressing an issue that affects over 200,000 old people and something many of our members encounter in hospitals throughout the health service and the community on a daily basis."

Presentations from the day

• Laura Bennett, Policy Officer (Older People and Adult Social Care), Sense “The White Paper: Making it a reality" (PDF 54kb)
  
   
• Dr Anna McGee, Head of Research, Sense “The identification and assessment of the needs of older people with combined hearing and sight loss in residential homes" (PDF 34kb)
  
   
• Laura Ferguson, Director, Campaign to End Loneliness “Working together to tackle loneliness" (PDF 1mb)