Making change happen in 2022

As 2022 comes to a close, Independent Age’s Head of Policy and Influencing, Morgan Vine reflects on the past year along with our successes and challenges.

To say it’s been a turbulent year feels like an understatement. I’ve personally felt unable to predict what is going to happen one week to the next. Sadly, one certainty has been that people across our society have faced many challenges over the last twelve months.

The people in later life that we speak to at Independent Age have shared the continued impact of the pandemic, their anxiety around the rising cost of living and ongoing challenges accessing support at key times. I’ve met and spoken with some truly amazing people this year and despite many of them having a really tough time themselves, or assisting their communities through continuing challenges, they have still found time to support Independent Age’s campaigns to help others who are struggling. To all of you, a huge thank you!

As the Head of Policy and Influencing at the charity, my role is to work with people in later life, colleagues, and friends in the sector to ensure that the problems experienced by older people are amplified on a public stage and that the systems they rely on are improved by the decision makers in charge. This year we’ve worked across a range of themes including poverty, health, care and bereavement.

Our biggest impacts this year

Together, we’ve had a big impact in 2022. Our campaigners have caught the attention of decision-makers, spread the word to friends and family, and helped people to understand just how important the issues we work on can be to older people. Thank you so much to everyone who supported our activity, it’s meant we’ve made real difference to people’s lives. Here are my top three impact highlights:

1. The government invested in awareness raising of Pension Credit: In the summer the government invested more than a million pounds in a nationwide Pension Credit marketing campaign. They are also conducting similar activity this December. The Minister shared publicly that since the summer, claims have gone up three-fold, which sounds positive, but we want to know how many of these have been successful. We believe there is more the government could do to effectively target their Pension Credit awareness activity and we won’t stop until everything has been done to ensure the 850,000 eligible pensioners receive the money they are missing out on.

2. The government provided cost of living payments: This year the government announced two cost of living support packages, including specific payments for those who get income related benefits. The 1.4 million older people who receive Pension Credit should get both a £650 and a £900 payment which adds up to an investment of approximately £2.1 billion from the government. This was a big commitment and showed how much political pressure there has been to take action on cost of living for those on the lowest incomes. Together, we’ve significantly contributed to this. However, Pension Credit is not received by everyone who is entitled to it, and those who miss out will also have missed out on these cost of living payments. In May, the Chancellor at the time (Rishi Sunak MP) said he would have to find a different way of targeting support to this group so he also directed money to all older people through the Winter Fuel Payment. Without our awareness raising of poor Pension Credit uptake, potentially hundreds of thousands of people would have missed out on financial support during the cost-of-living crisis.

We know times are still tough, and that for many this money might not be enough, so we will continue to campaign on costs in 2023 to ensure people in later life on a low income have the support they need to manage them.

3. The government uprated Pension Credit and the State Pension by inflation: In November 2022, the government confirmed they will uprate Pension Credit and other benefits in line with inflation. This means that many of the 1.4 million households getting Pension Credit will receive approximately an extra £900 a year compared to if Pension Credit had been frozen. An investment from Government of over £1.2 billion for older people on low income.

We’ve worked hard to contribute to securing the above wins for people on low income, as well as working across other themes such as health, care and bereavement.

If you want to learn more about our activity here are my top ten moments from 2022:

1. Researching poverty in later life: In the first half of the year we released new research on poverty in later life which gave us powerful evidence about the number of people affected by poverty in later life, and the specific groups more at risk — for example women, people from Black and Asian communities and private renters. Alongside the number crunching, we spoke directly to older people facing financial hardship, and produced multiple briefings highlighting key themes. Our activity shone a public spotlight on their voices, including through national media coverage in the Guardian, the i-newspaper and the Express.

2. Raising the volume on Pension Credit: Our Credit Where It’s Due campaign has been fighting for the government to increase Pension Credit uptake. Pension Credit is money set aside for older people living on a low income (find out more on our advice pages). We continued to have an impact throughout 2022; giving evidence in Parliament, working with politicians to raise the problem in Westminster, supporting thousands of campaigners to write to their MP and speaking out about this issue on TV and radio including being featured on ITV Tonight, Sky News and Steph’s Packed Lunch. We met with companies to push them to do more and engaged with local councils. We also spoke on panels at the political party conferences alongside influential MPs. It was a big moment for our campaign when the Work and Pensions Select Committee echoed our call for a Pension Credit uptake strategy.

3. Making the case for cost-of-living payments: As inflation rose and prices skyrocketed, calls to our helpline from people worried about how they would afford their bills became more and more serious. We knew a big intervention would be needed from the government to ensure those most in need were protected, including more than two million older people living in poverty. We amplified the voices of the people we were speaking to in the media, in Parliament and with other influential committees and groups. We shared with government the importance of targeting support at older people on a low income and highlighted the fact that only using Pension Credit as a way to identify this group would be ineffective as too many eligible people currently miss out on that financial support.

4. Calling for social security payments to increase by inflation: High costs were hitting people left, right and centre, and another big question reared its head in the summer around whether the government would increase the State Pension and social security payments, including Pension Credit, in line with inflation. Not doing this would have meant that people who were reliant on means tested financial support from the government would have experienced a real terms cut in their income, and this was causing great anxiety for the people calling our helpline.

People in later life are often missing from the conversation when it comes to social security, but many people in later life on a low income do rely on it. We banged the drum loudly on this issue, supporting thousands of people to share their concerns with their MPs alongside our Public Affairs team who met with influential politicians to share our research and recommendations. We spoke on panels at the political party conferences, appeared on TV and in newspapers and submitted evidence to the government and parliamentary committees.

One of my proudest moments was when we joined other charities from across the age and disability sectors and delivered a group of petitions — totalling over 400,000 signatures — to Downing Street calling for all benefits to be uprated by inflation.

5. Working with our LEAP: We really value learning from people who have first-hand experience of different challenges and issues and in 2022 we’ve continued to collaborate with our fantastic Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP). This panel is made up of people aged 65 and over who give up their time to help shape and inform our policy and influencing activity. We’ve had really interesting and creative sessions across the year discussing how to effectively signpost social care support, what images and language to use in relation to both poverty and bereavement and we’ve sought their input on some campaign resources we’re developing. I’m looking forward to growing this group in 2023 and working with them across our themes to ensure that our activity is as powerful as possible.

6. Developing campaign resources: We regularly connect with older people’s groups and forums across the nations, many of whom run their own campaigns as well as actively supporting ours. We know that many of these forums are filled with experienced campaigners while others have shared they’d value training and tips on how to campaign. This year we’ve run a project to create ‘how to campaign’ resources to support more people to campaign on the issues that matter to them. We’ve developed these alongside our brilliant LEAP volunteers who have been advising on the content and style. These will be ready to share in 2023 and I’m excited to see how people use them to make change in their local communities.

7. Making bereavement everyone’s business: Supporting people after a bereavement is really important to me personally and I’ve felt incredibly privileged to represent Independent Age on the steering group of the UK Commission on Bereavement to make sure older people’s experiences were not forgotten. This autumn the Commission launched its landmark report, Bereavement is Everyone’s Business. Our Policy colleagues analysed evidence from across the UK, including from more than 1,000 individuals of all ages and over 130 organisations. We submitted our own evidence raising specific challenges that were shared with us such as the lack of signposting to emotional support, ageist assumptions and bereavement being a trigger into financial hardship for many people in later life. We are proud that older people’s voices are featured throughout the report, and many of the Commissioner’s recommendations support our own. ​​​​​​​The report launched in October with some great UK wide coverage including on LBC, the BBC, in the Guardian, the Independent and the Telegraph & Argus. Since then, we’ve taken part in multiple roundtables in England and Scotland, held events on bereavement at the political party conferences in every nation, and are pushing governments across the UK to put in a place strategies to improve the support bereaved individuals are offered.

8. Making a mark in Scotland: As well as working to raise the issue of poverty in later life in Scotland, our Scottish team have been conducting research and having conversations with older people facing financial hardship. We became members of the Poverty Alliance and published a guest blog to highlight the issue of poverty in later life. We also attended the Scottish political parties Autumn conferences, where we spoke to Members of the Scottish Parliament — including the Minister for Equalities and Older People — about the issues affecting people facing financial hardship in later life.

9. Improving social care information and advice: Our Independent Age phone advisers do a fantastic job each year supporting thousands of people to navigate the social care system, but in an ideal world people wouldn’t need us to help them do this. Sadly, at the moment the social care system is incredibly complex, and people phone us when they are in real crisis trying to get support for themselves or someone they are close to.

Our Policy team used insights from our advisers, alongside conversations with older people and with social workers to identify the key problems that older people and their families face. In December we released a briefing demonstrating the challenges and suggesting practical policy solutions we believe would help. We’ve shared this with stakeholders in the sector to inform pieces of work we know are underway.

10. Raising mental health up the agenda: In 2020 our Minds that matter report demonstrated that anxiety and low mood are common feelings experienced in later life. And we also know that living with money worries and debt can significantly increase people’s stress and anxiety levels. This year we responded to the UK government’s draft mental health strategy, including encouraging and supporting our campaigners to respond individually so that older people’s voices were heard. We worked with the NHS in England to review and improve their national campaign on talking therapies to help it reach more people in later life. We also amplified the issues people face in Scotland by submitting responses to two Scottish government consultations: the health and social care strategy for older people and the mental health and wellbeing strategy. Our responses were informed by conversations our Scottish colleagues had with people in the community about their biggest concerns across health and care and what they believe could improve things. We hope governments in both nations will act on our recommendations.

Moving forward

Though we’ve had some big wins this year for people in later life, we know that many will continue to struggle, particularly those facing financial hardship. The evidence is clear; pensioner poverty is on the rise. With this in mind, moving forward we will be turning our attention to focus on people who fall into this group do everything we can to make their lives better.

To achieve this we will continue trying to increase people’s income through policy change including making sure the government finds the 850,000 people missing out on Pension Credit across the UK. We also want to investigate what life is like for those who don’t qualify for Pension Credit and what they need to be able to live their later lives with dignity, choice and purpose. In addition, we’ll explore new themes around preventing high costs and making sure homes are affordable and safe.

Alongside all of this, we will increase the volume and join with others, on our call for the government to establish an Older People’s Commissioner in England and Scotland to ensure the voices of older people are heard by decision makers at the heart of government.

Want to help?

• If you’re not already a member, you can find out more, stay up to date and support our activity by joining our campaigns network. This means you’ll receive email updates, and you can get involved as and when you choose.
• Already a campaigner with us? Why not share our campaign actions with friends and family to see if they’d like to get involved and support.
• You could also investigate our LEAP volunteer role and help us shape our work. We’re particularly keen to hear from people who feel financially insecure, who rent, who are 80+ and those from Black, Asian and other minoritised communities as we know these groups are particularly impacted by financial hardship.