Today is the Global Day of Care and Support for Older People.

It was a day which was launched at the Global Ageing Conference when it was held in Glasgow at this time last year in 2023. It is a day which is being marked globally by organisations, care providers and staff.

At the event last year Jiri Horecky, Chair of the Global Ageing Network, told delegates at the Glasgow conference, that the day is a chance to recognise the work of the “most important pillars” of our social care systems:

“We would like to pay respect to them and show how important those social care workers, nurses, volunteers and all those people supporting older people are.”

So today in diverse ways the value of older age will be celebrated by means of affirming those who are working in our health and social care systems and services. The specific day for older people themselves is held every year on the 1^st October, the United Nations International Day for Older Persons.

The Global Ageing Network together with Scottish Care and the National Care Forum brought hundreds of people together at the event in Glasgow last year from 52 countries in order to debate, reflect and consider issues of importance in what is internationally known and termed as ‘aged care.’

A year on from that day a series of reflections will appear on later on today (Saturday 7^th) on social media and on the Scottish Care website from contributors who attended the event from England, Canada, Kenya, Italy and Australia. Have a look at their reflections of how a year later they are working to make real change in their own local communities, whether that is using technology in new and innovative ways, addressing how we can better support international workers, starting desperately needed homecare in deprived and poverty-stricken areas or developing co-housing options and so much more.

Every story has shown me that gathering people together from all parts of the world has an amazing effect of changing folks, of inspiring and helping people to feel part of something bigger, a global community which has shared values and core concerns.

I reflected last week in my blog about how important it is that those of us who work and live in the worlds of health and social care need to take risks and lift our heads above the protected parapets of our own world and to venture into new possibilities and ways of doing and being. Too often we limit ourselves and our imaginations to that which we know, the voices we have heard, and the experience we alone possess. In my mother’s time as a child in a Hebridean island the next world was the village over the mountain. We dare not limit our discovery to that which we know. That is why in all walks of life I believe, and no less in the care and support of all our citizens, we need to drink deep from the wells of our common humanity.

In my global conversations this week a year on from the Global Ageing Conference I have been reminded of the global smallness of our concerns in the face of grinding poverty and harsh circumstance. I have been reminded that despite our differences of culture, race and reality, that there are common threads of our humanity with one another than bind us in cords of unbreakable responsibility and connection.

In further reflection on the event last year, I remembered that I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to tell a bit about Scotland’s story by being able to speak both in a plenary session and in a workshop. And one of the things I spoke about was the aspiration which had resulted in the Scottish Government of the day bringing forward proposals for a new Human Rights Bill which would incorporate some of the international human rights protections for individuals into our own national law. The plans to ensure that there would be greater accountability to some of our most vulnerable citizens and increased requirements to ensure human rights were upheld by public bodies and other agencies and organisations were not insignificant.

So it was therefore with immense disappointment but perhaps not surprise that I saw the current administration drawing back from the earlier proposals and plans to bring forward a Human Rights Bill in this week’s Programme for Government.

Now I grant you that as I work in a sector which is facing inordinate challenge (and for whom the Programme for Government was an immense flop! (more of that later)) and as someone who has spoken this week to people across the globe – you might think that introducing another Bill to add to the existing human rights protections was not something of priority and significance. But I would beg to disagree because enshrining in our law, clearer duties and powers to ensure that the old, those with disabilities, those who have no voice, those who require protection, those who struggle to access health and social care – and so much more – to ensure that all citizens have added protection is not of secondary importance but is primary.

The priorities of a government are mirrored in the legislative programme it seeks to adopt and implement and I am not at all sure what dropping the Human Rights Bill and the years of work and commitment to get to this stage says about the current administration. But I fear it does not say anything positive. It serves to shrink our ambition, limit our horizons, and squash our aspirations as individuals and as civic society. This is not the global and international courage and viewpoint which I would say is the essence of our nationhood.

To age is a global journey. To protect all as we age by robust human rights frameworks and laws should be the task of every government regardless of resource or political priority.

At the Global Ageing Conference last year, I shared some of my favourite Scottish poets with some old and new friends, highlighting the nature of outward looking optimism and international engagement which lies at the heart of the Scottish character.  A colleague in turn introduced me to one of their favourite poets, the Nigerian poet, Gabriel Okara. One of his poems, “The Old Woman” reflects the deep respect and reverence traditionally accorded to elders in many African cultures, where aging is often associated with wisdom, experience, and a wealth of knowledge. The poem describes the physical changes that come with age, not as losses, but as a transformation that carries its own form of beauty and significance.

It captures the universal insight that aging brings with it a unique understanding of life, which can be shared with others. The call to “sit at the feet of the old woman” encourages a global perspective of valuing the elderly for their experiences and insights, recognising that their stories hold the lessons and heritage of all humanity.

It is a poem of global relevance on this Global day and every day, and its articulation of dignity, humanity and relationship is the essence of all human rights, and it is why we should never as government or individual shy away from extending protection and furthering the realisation of human rights.

The Old Woman by Gabriel Okara

Who can gaze at the hair of the old woman Without being touched by the whiteness of its wisdom?

Who can behold the stooped shoulders of the old woman Without marveling at the weight they have borne?

Who can see the creased face of the old woman Without wondering at the windstorms it has braved?

Who can look into the dim eyes of the old woman Without pondering the visions they have seen?

Once she was a maiden,

With a crown of black hair

And shoulders upright and strong.

Once her face was smooth and fair,

Her eyes bright as the new moon.

But time, that relentless sculptor,

Has carved deep lines of wisdom,

Bent her shoulders with burdens,

Bleached her hair with experience,

Dimmed her eyes with visions seen,

And left her with a legacy

Of tales untold, wisdom unshared.

Come, sit at the feet of the old woman,

Listen to the stories she weaves,

For in her words, you will find the world — Its joys, its sorrows, its hopes, its fears — All nestled in the cradle of her voice.

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Colby Ray on Unsplash

I’m not a great lover of the month of August. For me it has always been a betwixt and between time; the usual warmth of the summer sun is disappearing, the days are beginning to shorten. Change is in the air, and yet we’re not quite into the crisp freshness of the autumn with its intensity of sharp seasonal change and the iridescent colours of the countryside. It’s a month uncertain of where it belongs, neither fish nor fowl.

But in this month of August whose last day is this one what I often try to do is to undertake all those tasks of tidying, sorting and organising which should’ve been done in the spring but clearly with annual repetition and predictability I end up not achieving.

So it was last weekend that I found myself with my equally prevaricating 10-year-old in a futile attempt at tidying a bedroom and specifically trying to organise the shelves of her bookcase. And as the young, determined individual she is she was very sure about the categories which she wanted to use in the organising of her books and one of them was ‘adventures.’

She has a lot of books about adventures! But I quickly concluded as we agreed to disagree that her concept of adventure was somewhat different to my own. It made me start to think about what the word ‘adventure’ really means. What is it that constitutes an adventure in both literature and maybe more so in life itself?

It’ll come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I soon delved into the etymology and root meaning of the word. I discovered that the word ‘adventure’ has at its root a Latin word ‘adventurus’ which has the connotation and has the meaning of ‘about to arrive’ and ‘ about to happen’ and indeed is the root of the word advent which is used for the weeks before Christmas.

It wasn’t until the mediaeval period in the 13th century that the word was first used to suggest an activity of uncertainty, of risk or chance and at the same time fun and enjoyment.

I couldn’t help thinking about that sense of adventure, of risk taking, of doing the unpredictable and the unexpected when I sat and listened to some of the words of the Prime Minister in his alternative Number 10 garden party last Tuesday. In a speech which was the very reverse of ‘you’ve never had it so good’ we had ‘the worst is still to come.’ Negative foreshadowing and warnings of doom and gloom not least in the coming October budget.

Now I’m not for one minute belittling or demeaning the challenges which this new government is facing or the decisions that both it and as a consequence the Scottish Government may have to make. Indeed, anybody working in the world of social care could not escape the reality of challenge of these days both fiscally, operationally and humanly.

But surely it is how you respond to such challenges that is important? Is our response to be one of appropriate adventure and calculated risk taking or one of passive acceptance and compliance?

‘Walk on air against your better judgement’ is the phrase which appears as an epitaph on the grave of one of my all-time favourite poets the Irishman Seamus Heaney, the anniversary of whose death was yesterday.

The quote is in his 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech though it first appeared in an earlier poem. In a 2008 interview Heaney was asked why he chose it. He said:

“A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious. You grew up vigilant because it’s a divided society. My poetry on the whole was earth hugging, but then I began to look up rather than keep down. I think it had to do with a sense that the marvellous was as permissible as the matter-of-fact in poetry.”

The historian Eugene Kielt said of the phrase:

“It is a beautiful line, very inspirational. It is about going for it. We are naturally cautious and sometimes someone should throw caution to the wind… It is about keeping your feet on the ground but looking up as well. It is about risk taking and not being inhibited, losing your inhibitions.”

Is that not in essence what adventurousness is all about? Yet perhaps those of us who work and breathe the life of care and support are more used to risk assessment, of calculating and weighing up to such an extent that it paralyses us from taking the step out into the unknown into the unpredictable.

Over the years working with adults who have used care and support services I have often heard the plea from people that they should be allowed to step out into the bravery of the unknown, that their lives should not be limited and curtailed because of the fears of others; that there is more to life than every moment being assessed on a matrix of safeguarding and protection.

This past week I have felt as August ends and perhaps more than ever before that the whole social care community in Scotland needs to discover some of the brave invitation of Seamus Heaney and to walk on air against our better judgment. I think the time has long since come that those who use care and support services, those who provide them and work in them, should grasp the control wheels and take the future map of our sector away from the hands of politician and policy maker.

Life if it is anything is an adventure. Social care if it is about anything is about enabling people to discover the fulness of life and to reach for and thrive to their potential. It is about walking on air against our better judgment.

So as the autumn months start, I intend to be braver and more adventurous, to spend time living in and pulling myself into a future which is a human happening all around us. Caution should not curtail but find itself thrown into the air.

Where is our spirit of adventure? Where are the places and spaces where we can walk on air? Where are the people prepared to join us in communities which create possibility rather than seek to fulfil pessimistic despair?

The social care adventure starts with our feet on the ground of reality but our heads and hearts breathing the air of hope.

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash

Well, it came to an end this week, or at least on this side of the Atlantic. After months on the road the phenomenon which is Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour ended a five-night run in London’s Wembley Stadium. The BBC reported that The Eras Tour has seen Taylor perform to ‘almost 1.2 million fans in the UK, and last night’s show was the 131st date of the tour worldwide. Speaking at the gig, she said: “I’ve never had it this good before. I’ve never had a crowd that’s so generous.”’

The economic benefit to the communities and locations in which she has toured has been enormous. The Taylor Swift phenomenon has impacted right across the UK this summer… and I must confess, even if grudgingly at first, I have become a Swiftie! It is hard not to do so with a ten-year-old as part of your life constantly turning the car radio onto one of the many 24-hour Taylor Swift channels.

But behind all the feathers and friendship bangles, the Stetson hats and t-shirt dresses, it is the lyrics to her songs which have caught my attention. In no small way she is one of the few whose ability to craft meaning through words and music, and to tell a story of depth and insight, makes her for me at least rank along my all-time hero Bruce Springsteen. And no more so than in speaking of grief, hurt, loss and sadness.

I grew up at a time when people very rarely talked about their feelings and what might be called the big questions of life, especially about death, dying, grief and loss. Emotions were buttoned up and put aside and folks argued we just needed to get on with living.

But over time that cold detachment within society has gradually thawed. And a major contributor to that change has been the way in which the arts and entertainment has become the vehicle and means of expressing deeply held thoughts and emotions.

Indeed a few years ago I used to run a workshop called ‘Death at the Movies’ in which I tried to help health and care staff to recognise that everywhere in contemporary cinema the themes and issues people tried to ignore and shy away from were staring them in the face – literally!  I tried to show that whether in the world of the latest Disney movie or on popular TV soaps that there was an honest and a very real, sometimes raw, attempt to deal with the hard questions of life, death and meaning in a way which helped people open up and to start to talk.

I would suggest that remains the case in a lot of contemporary cinema but the last few decades have also really witnessed the ability and desire of popular singers to use their music and lyrics to deal with some of life’s hard questions.

And why is all this important? Well at the most basic level we all need to get better about talking about death and dying, about managing grief and doing the work of mourning, and we are enormously helped in doing that if that which entertains and inspires us, be it cinema or music, is being used as the vehicle for that communication.

In the previous few decades in my life no-one encapsulated the ability to tell a story, and to make me think about the realities of life, love, death and dying better than Bruce Springsteen. Taylor Swift is tackling the same issues, opening the same door to honest reflection and critical thinking, for a new generation – and for that I much admire her.

Springsteen and Swift deal with the themes of loss and grief in different ways, ways that reflect their own personalities and experience, but also the era and unique time they both live in. That is what makes their contributions important.

Taylor Swift speaks to and for her generation, in a unique and accessible way. Increasingly her lyrics particularly in albums like Folklore and Evermore, and especially in tracks like “My Tears Ricochet” and “Marjorie,” try to translate the universal experiences of sorrow into relatable experiences. She describes her own finding of solace amongst heartache and her melodies underpin the truth that grief is not just a moment but a journey that goes on.

‘The autumn chill that wakes me up
You loved the amber skies so much
Long limbs and frozen swims
You’d always go past where our feet could touch
And I complained the whole way there
The car ride back and up the stairs
I should’ve asked you questions
I should’ve asked you how to be
Asked you to write it down for me
Should’ve kept every grocery store receipt
‘Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me
Watched as you signed your name Marjorie
All your closets of backlogged dreams
And how you left them all to me.’

(from Marjorie, Taylor Swift)

Bruce Springsteen has long spoken to me and many with death and grief a companion within his songs, whether in the iconic “The River” or the reflective “Terry’s Song,” Springsteen confronts mortality with a hard, unflinching gaze. His music and its raw description of the nature of loss, loss of youth, decaying towns, and passing friends, shows the nature of community supporting sadness, of grief held up by collective strength and solidarity.

‘They say you can’t take it with you, but I think that they’re wrong
‘Cause all I know is I woke up this morning, and something big was gone
Gone into that dark ether where you’re still young and hard and cold
Just like when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

Now your death is upon us and we’ll return your ashes to the earth
And I know you’ll take comfort in knowing you’ve been roundly blessed and cursed
But love is a power greater than death, just like the songs and stories told
And when she built you, brother, she broke the mold’

(From Terry’s Song, Springsteen)

Whether it is Swift’s or Springsteen’s music, grief and death are not merely subjects but are portrayed as integral parts of the human experience. They invite us to sit with our sadness, to reflect on the impermanence of life, and to find beauty and meaning in the midst of loss. While Swift’s approach is deeply personal and introspective, often channelling the inner turmoil of grief, Springsteen’s work often looks outward, exploring how communities and individuals grapple with death and its aftermath.

Ultimately, these artists and the many, many creatives, who use their art to speak of deeper truth, remind us that grief is a universal experience, yet deeply personal in its expression. Whether through Swift’s intimate, lyrical narratives or Springsteen’s expansive, anthemic storytelling, the themes of death and grief resonate across their music, offering solace and understanding to those navigating their own losses.

For those of us who work in places and spaces where we are invited to bring solace and comfort, to enable and encourage others to ask life’s questions, I think we would all do well to let the singers sing, the story tellers talk, the television play and the silver screen entertain with the truth of loving.

Donald Macaskill

I have always been fascinated and intrigued by photography, One of the first ‘big’ presents I got as a child was a simple camera. It was an Olympus Trip 35. This was in the days of using real film on a roll, taking it to the chemist and waiting a few days for the photos to develop. The sense of disappointment that the landscape image or unique portrait I had spent time capturing had not quite worked but was instead a blurry mess was my more usual memory.

As I grew older, I moved into the world of SLRs with lenses and tripod and all the paraphernalia. Taking a photograph became an act of carrying the equivalent of the kitchen sink with me and to the annoyance of many it took so so very long to set up and capture that perfect image! And in all honesty, I’m not that sure it was often achieved! I still possess some of this equipment, but it sits in the bottom of a cupboard unused and gathering dust.

The main reason for such neglect is the rapid development and improvement of my iPhone which produces photos of amazing quality and provides options which are instant and accessible. Equally important is the ability to take so many and delete even more!

I am thinking a lot of photography at the moment because on Monday coming, (the 19^th August), we will be observing World Photography Day which is a globally recognised celebration of the photograph and its history.

Apart from taking countless pictures I have always been fascinated by the way in which photographs were and are able to bring me into another world. Photographs have an astonishing power and ability to root us in memory.

I have attended loads of photography exhibitions from the masters like Henri Cartier Bresson who brought 1930s Paris and the faces of its streets alive, or the Glasgow giants like Oscar Marzaroli whose images of Glasgow children in backcourts depicted the grim reality of poverty in the 1950s and 60s so sharply, or my favourite from last year the American Great Depression chronicler Dorothea Lange whose stark imagery painted the true picture of dustbowl poverty and racial discrimination in the pre-World War Two US. There is a lot to learn by looking through the lens of a great photographer.

Growing up I poured over the few family photographs we had and benefited as the year passed and as we inherited more family black and white snaps, from my mother putting names to faces, stories to images, and memory to the captured moment. Photographs were the door to the history of a time and people I belonged to but could not be present amongst.

When I have sat with those I have known who lived with dementia or have been in care homes I have witnessed just how valuable a tool photographs and photography are in supporting people who live with dementia. Even when her dementia was really bad my mother seemed to come alive when she took off her glasses, looked at a photograph, and the sparkle of a happy moment or even a sad reflection brought her to the point of telling the story it held.

Photographs can help in so many ways. They can trigger memory, giving a feel and recall of the moment and help someone preserve that critical sense of identity which dementia often strips away. They can help someone find the words and language which allows them to say what they are feeling at that moment, and they can also act as a means to calm and soothe someone by rooting them into recollection. That is why I can attest to the powerful value of gathering photographs into a memory book for someone who might frequently forget things. As they look through the book memory is stirred, calmness soothes, and reflection is the quieter of hurt.

A picture does indeed tell a thousand stories. It can give us the words we have lost to speak of the moment which is ours. It can help us to spark a conversation and to express what might be too hurtful or hard to say directly.

I used to use photographs in supporting those who found words challenging and difficult because of age or disability, and to do so often around hard and emotional issues such as death, dying, grief and bereavement. A shared photograph, especially one with association and personal memory, allowed us to get alongside one another, to tell our tale of hurt or healing, by looking at and through the image in our hands rather than having to hold the gaze of the memory through direct eye contact. The photo became our distracted focus for feelings.

There are lots of families who come together very often at points of loss and grief and who in looking though albums and photographs heal one another’s hurt in that mixture of tears of happiness and emptiness.

I do sometimes wonder if in this instant photographic digital age that we are in danger of losing the tactile and tangible giftedness of the physical photograph; of losing the sharing of the image and the conjuring of delight, shock and admiration.

In an age where we have more cameras than we have ever had. In an era where there are more photographs taken than there ever have been, is there a danger that we have lost the art of using photographs as a solace and sharing of memory?

I read recently that 99% of photographs we take are never shared and never printed out. Now I am all for sustainability, but I fear we are losing something about the sustainability of tangible memory, the touch of recollection, the real power of the photograph to connect us to ourselves and to others.

Maybe that is why there has been such a growth recently in scrap-booking, and in apps which make it easier for us to print out and hold onto our photographs. Indeed, almost as a reaction to the digitisation of memory it is estimated by one commentator that the photo printing market is going to grow by over 10% in the next 5 years.

This World Photography Day I’ll take my phone and take a few pictures, but I will also go and print some, so that I and others can sit and share, reflect and remember, the moment which was captured and which tells a thousand words worth.

But of course everything including our photographs are in the eye of the beholder as the poet Drora Matlofsky reminds us:

My Father’s Father

Mum gave me a picture
of my father’s father.
(Her Alzheimer-clouded mind
doesn’t like photos,
because she seldom recognises
the faces looking up at her.)

‘I don’t know what to do with it,’
she says.

A forty-year old man
dressed as in the thirties
sitting on a low wall
looks far away
at something I cannot see
and smiles.

He died before I was born.
I know little of him.

I put the picture away
with other family photos.

Papa’s French father now sits alone
among Mum’s English relatives
he never met
and whose language he didn’t speak.
How ironic they should end up
in the same box.

My Father’s Father poem – Drora Matlofsky (best-poems.net)

Donald Macaskill.

Photo by Alexander Wang on Unsplash