UK Age Care and Retirement: Solutions for the 21st Century

In April 2018, Dialog Health organised a UK study tour for 14 senior executives from Australia, New Zealand and Canada, who were looking to gain fresh insights into care delivery for their own organisations.

The focus of the tour was to investigate the delivery of age care services and seniors living in the United Kingdom, with a particular emphasis on British retirement villages.

Over the course of 12 days, the delegates visited twelve separate facilities owned and operated by twelve different organisations, based in London and Bristol, and in Surrey. These visits to elder care facilities not only highlighted successful commercial models in the field, but also gave an overview of the current UK system of age care.

The tour then culminated in attendance at the Inaugural CommonAge Elders Forum and the 3-day National Care Forum (NCF) annual conference in Reading. The conference covered many topics from current practice in dementia care to UK perspectives on social care. The delegation looked at alternate solutions from around the world that might be applicable to respective local communities.

This UK study tour was an outstanding success on many levels; significant working relationships were forged and/or reinforced between organisations and between individuals.