At last, a scheme for older people that really works

Elderly care worker
The Tower Hamlets LinkAge scheme 'has made a huge impact on people who would otherwise have no quality of life'. Photograph: Graham Turner null/Graham Turner

The LinkAge scheme is a blueprint for the future care of older people, explicitly mentioned as such in the recent concordat on the future of commissioning, Putting People First, which is designed to provide the motor for change in care for the next decade. The scheme is bloody good, too, as it happens. And it is simple.

Essentially, it is founded in a local authority and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) brokered agreement between various voluntary organisations in localised pilot areas. They agree not to get under each other's feet by competing unnecessarily - so they don't all run clubs for silver surfers on the same day, for example. They also act as signposts to one another's services.

This may not sound revolutionary, but anyone familiar with the idiotic rivalries and duplications of effort that bedevil local charities will give three cheers. They will cheer louder still if you tell them LinkAge partners put concerted work into helping much smaller local charitable organisations to develop localised services.

The successful Tower Hamlets LinkAge scheme in east London, the pilot I know best, is also bolstered by outreach workers who go out to find vulnerable and isolated older people, referred by worried neighbours, the police and other older people, among others. It is discreet and it will not push people who want to live quietly by themselves, but the service has made a huge impact on people who would otherwise have no quality of life because they are frightened, lonely or just stuck in a rut.

It is no exaggeration to say lives are being saved and transformed, as manifestations of exclusion are attacked, and the increasing number of older people who no longer qualify for statutory help are reached.

If you want practical examples of the positive impact of LinkAge, it will tell you about clients in the early stages of dementia, who have been stuck in their homes in despair and who now meet peers and socialise. The scheme has freed money from unnecessary duplication and dramatically increased the range of services in Tower Hamlets by funding smaller charities.

It has also ensured that service providers across the borough know what one another are doing and can pass it on to residents, so there is a much better sense of the opportunities available. It has meant that what were once ghettoised services for minority groups have much broader contacts. Most notably from my perspective, it has led to the formation of groups of older people as friends, who organise their own activities away from the providers that manage the schemes.

Across the country there are eight LinkAge schemes. They have varied widely in their impact, but most have been notably successful. So can it be replicated everywhere? Participants say it can, although it depends on a willingness to break down traditional barriers and talk to one another. "Culture change is a hard trick," says the infectiously enthusiastic Debbie Walker, chief executive of Tower Hamlets Age Concern, "but we've pulled it together. No door is closed when older people turn up."

This kind of change needs goodwill and a certain amount of chivvying, which was the job of David Cowell, a principal commissioner at the borough. "I had to learn to let people think creatively," he says. "I traded power for influence."

That is music to the ears of any enterprising voluntary organisation and ought to be a mantra for change over the next five years, as work around developing individualised budgets kicks in. Collectively, everyone involved in the Tower Hamlets scheme deserves recognition, which I suppose the mention in the concordat supplied. Odd, then, that DWP funding, which made it all possible, was wound up. Fortunately, Tower Hamlets and the local health commissioners rode gallantly to the rescue.

It is great to see the good guys winning for a change - and to see a blueprint for change that ought to give future services a good kicking.
