Emma Soames
Let’s start at home. One family I know have radically changed their living arrangements. Their recently widowed mother was about to put the big family house on the market when first the slump in property prices undermined its value, then her son-in-law was made redundant. Having thought the previously unthinkable, the young family moved back to their mother’s house, which, with a little rearranging of rooms, now accommodates them all comfortably.
The daughter and son-in-law have let their smaller home and everyone shares the outgoings of the big house. The daughter is still working, but without astronomical childcare fees that relied on two salaries, since for the moment Granny is sharing duties with her son-in-law.
The reports I am getting from two of the three generations involved are very positive. Everyone has had to make compromises, but Granny loves spending more time with her grandchildren and having her much-loved house used again for family life. The adult children are relieved that the spectre of losing their house has disappeared.
I suspect this multi-generational scenario is being played out in families across the land through sheer force of circumstance. It may start as huddling together for security in the terrible economic weather, but it will be interesting to see if this trend continues when the financial sun shines again. Swap till you drop, page 58 of the February 2009 edition of Saga Magazine.
Neighbourliness is another concept whose moment of rebirth has come – it is something we have taken for granted as integral to the British way of life and yet is dying on its feet in so many cities. I recently discovered an interesting London-based organisation called Participle, which improves the quality of life for older people within their own communities.
Participle calls itself a 'do tank' and its mission is to bring some of the ethics of good social design to council services. A new project called Southwark Circle has started in a part of south London where the population includes a high number of pensioners. The aim is to help old people with those pesky jobs that can become difficult with age; at the same time it offers local working people the opportunity to get paid to do these jobs for a neighbour they probably didn’t even know before.
Members of the Circle will cope with anything from changing a lightbulb or sorting out a computer to help with shopping – all the practical things that can be a problem for older people. Circle does all the necessary checks on the good neighbours as well as running the service from one telephone number, thus keeping it both simple and local.
It costs £10 a month for an older person to subscribe, but you need only use the service more than once a month for it to become brilliantly good value.
For pensioners themselves or for adult children with an ageing parent living in the area, it is a peace-of-mind investment of the best sort. For the community, I’m sure it will encourage that fragile quality of neighbourliness in a typical city area of high population and very mixed housing (www.southwarkcircle.org.uk).
And what about business? Once we get past the moment when most companies are only interested in shedding jobs, the overall trend is more complex. In America, large companies face losing whole layers of management as baby-boomers hit retirement age. Companies really need to hang on to them, so some big brains have been thinking up ways to help them keep their ageing workforces.
Hence the dawn of the Boomerang Year. On reaching traditional retirement age, employees are being offered between a few months and a couple of years of “retirement”, after which they return to work for the company. Some take up their previous role, others work part-time or move into another job.
It strikes me as a win-win situation. A corporation retains the wisdom and experience of a valued resource. The boomeranger gets to practise retirement, maybe to fulfil the dream of a lifetime at an age to get the most out of it, then returns to earning a still-needed salary. I bet many people will be willing to continue working for longer when, refreshed by an adventure, they can return to their workplace in a job that suits their age and circumstances.
It’s a clever way to get us to work till we drop.