The Care Industry in the UK is in a mess

I have been musing about the mess that is the UK industry for the past couple of years. Having worked as a consultant in the industry I know how it works, or doesn’t, from back to front.

I warned a senior member of the Conservative Government, before they were elected, that it would be a major issue for them to resolve.  My warnings fell on deaf ears.

Not surprisingly the bad news keeps on coming and in my mind is turning into an avalanche.

This is my last posting on the subject.

Today’s FT has devoted two pages to the subject. Afraid it is behind a paywall, but you are not going to missing anything since it is a bit of a rehash of previous articles.

Let’s simplify the problems and the opportunities.

Problem 1. Because care was seen as a private equity play, much of the industry is landed with unsupportable amounts of debt. That results in little investment in the infrastructure and zero investment in improving the technology of care services and processes

Problem 2. Local Authorities are doing everything in their power to cut spending on old people. They are cutting the fees paid to care homes, they are making private payers fund those paid for by the state and they doing whatever they can not to put old people into care homes – even if that is where they should be.

Problem 3. There are not enough decent people to work in the care industry. The UK might have zillions of people on the dole but it depends on immigrant labour to run its care homes

Problem 4. The group that should be monitoring and maintaining the quality standards of care is crap. Read the blog posting and listen to the radio programme.

Problem 5. This Government is unprepared for this situation and seems unwilling or incapable of doing anything about it.

But there are opportunities. There are significant numbers of people who want to cutout of this dreadful system and have the money to do so.

Any care provider who does the following will cleanup

• Don’t take any business from the public sector. This is strictly private only. This will do away with the cross funding and the time wasting of social workers.
• Adopt the best business practices from the care industry in the US and Australia. There are some great examples of how to do it right.
• Run the operation with a single focus – delivering first class care. If staff cannot, or are unwilling to do this, they go. None of this nonsense that we have with the NHS and Social Services where ineptitude and idleness is tolerated.

This will result in an expensive but first class service. What we have at the moment is a costly and in the main poor service.

This story is going to run and run. Dick Stroud

Candy floss journalism

I get contacted by lots of journalists and have developed a sixth sense for spotting the variety that know what they want to hear and if you aint saying it, will keep searching until they find somebody who does. This happened to me a few weeks ago.

I am not going to identify the article or the journalist. If somebody contacts me they deserve to remain anonymous.

What I can tell you are the sure signs of an article (about older people) that is written by somebody who knows the conclusions before putting phone to ear or finger to keyboard. Invariably the article ends up being mishmash of generalisations and stereotypes.

Here are the five sure signs that you are reading a candy floss article:

Sign 1. The journalist is ‘I’ centered and is attempting to generalize the population from their own narrow, and normally urban and advantaged circumstances. If there are lots of ‘I’s in the first 200 words then you are reading pure candy floss. This is made even worse if they are over-50 or approaching that age. Then the article often becomes a form of therapy.

Sign 2. Attempting to extrapolate the universe from exceptional personalities or selected cases. As shed loads of celebrities hit the 50-age mark then there are lots of people to choose. The connection between wealthy celebrity X and Bill Bloggs, out of work factory worker, other that they are both 60 years old is zilch.

Sign 3. Very few facts. I have found this sort of journalist either cannot or is unwilling to get to grips with reality. It is much easier to live in their little bubble and ignore the complexities the real world. Facts get in the way.

Sign 4. Using examples that nobody has heard about. If you look long enough you will find somebody, somewhere, who is doing something that supports your view of the world. The fact that it is totally unrepresentative doesn’t matter a jot.

Sign 5. Stuffed full of home spun homilies – “age is just a number” - “ I have never felt so young” – “a new phase of life” ……. All this stuff is pure boilerplate that is churned out to avoid having to think.

At best a candy floss article about ageing will at least be amusing but too often it is nothing more than self-indulgent twaddle. Dick Stroud

Its now OK to advertise to the 55+

I have been meaning to write about an article that appeared in the New York Times on the 13th May entitled: “In Shift, Ads Try to Entice Over-55 Set.”

All of these quotes should be music to my ears but I just wonder why it has taken so long for the penny to drop – as us Brits would say.

A senior planner for BBDO NY, said there was now good reason for ad clients to seek the mature audience. “In some ways, they are the ideal consumer. They have money, they consume loads of media, and they remain optimistic,” she said.
After 40 years of catering to younger consumers, advertisers and media executives are coming to a different realization: older people aren’t so bad, after all.

As a result of the recent recession, unemployment rates for younger age groups have been far higher than those for older Americans. The most recent unemployment rate for those 20 to 24 years old is 14.2 percent; for those 25 to 34, it is 9.4 percent. The rate for people aged 55 to 64 is only 6.2 percent.


Financially, the disparity is similar. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, those people aged 45 to 54 and 55 to 64 had the highest median weekly earnings of any age segment in the United States: $844 and $860, respectively. Meanwhile, those 20 to 24 had weekly earnings of only $454. Those who are 25 to 34 earned $682.

Forbes picks up on this article and then adds a bit plus this video. Really not sure what to say about it.

I am sure it has been around for ages but it is new to me.

As a lot of my friends would say – "very American". I just cannot see us Brits doing something like this but then what is going in NY at the moment with the ex-head of the IMF I could believe anything. Dick Stroud

Who doesn’t use the Internet in the UK?

The latest data from the Office for National Statistics has just been published about those people in the UK who do not use the Internet.

No great surprises, other than the figure of a third of non-users has a disability. I guess that is not really a shock since most non-users will be old and more likely to be suffering from a medical condition that would be classified as a causing disability.

The spreadsheet containing this data and a hell of lot more about the regional composition of digital illiteracy can be found here. Dick Stroud

Boomers in Canada

My old chum Chuck Nyren is quoted in an article appearing in the Ottawa Citizen. As always Chuck talks a lot of sense as does Matt Thornhill, another of the US Boomer marketing experts.

There is another article in the paper about how to segment the Boomer market. There was a fashion a few years back for dicing and slicing the ‘N’ Zillion Boomers into a discreet groups/tribes and then to give them a silly name. I am as much to blame as anybody else for doing this sort of stuff. However, when I have used lifestyle segmentation I have tried to ensure it is based on some sort of research.

When I first started working in the 50-plus business I collected these daft sounding names. The last time I looked I had a couple of hundred. Here are four more I should add to my collection:

• Autonomous Rebels
• The Connected Enthusiasts
• Anxious Communitarians
• Disengaged Darwinists

Isn’t it odd that lifestyle segments names never include titles like “boring old sod” or “naïve and arrogant”. These being characteristics I have noted in some of my own age group I have encountered in the past week or so.

An observation about the web layout of the newspaper. I can see what the designers are trying to do but I fear that they have been a tad too clever. Certainly I had problems viewing the thing on my Apple. Dick Stroud

The hard times continue for the UK's over-50s

Back in Feb I wrote about the first issue of Saga’s Quarterly Report and congratulated the company on the new insights it was providing about older consumers in the UK. Well the second issue has just been published.

The research is based on a nationwide Survey of 11,800 over 50s with economic analysis and interpretation of official statistics. Rightly, Saga focuses on the impact on unemployment, low interest rates and rising inflation and the impact this toxic mixture has on older people.

As you can see, things are not getting any better. The decline in the perception of the standard of living has increased. Sorry about the standard of the images - you might need to click on them for full size version.

I commented upon the way that the younger old seem to be taking the brunt of the problems. As you can see this pattern continues.

For completeness, Saga should also be reporting about how younger age groups are faring. My guess is that it the result would not be much better. Part of the decline in the standard of living of the over-50s results from the financial sacrifices they are making for their kids and grandchildren. Dick Stroud

Zanran is Google for data

I got an e-mail this morning suggesting I have a look at a new search engine called Zanran. Like why would I need a new search engine?

I noticed that the address of the company was the UK and because it such a rarity for anything of technical excellence to come from good old Blighty I thought it was worth a look.

Cripes it is excellent. If you are looking for data and don't want to be bothered by news, videos and all of the other stuff that clutters Google then this is worth trying.

Well done guys for creating this search engine. Do hope your business thrives. Dick Stroud

Predictors of attitudes to age across Europe

The UK’s Department for Works and Pensions has published a 91 page report that tells us surprising little.

There are piles of charts like the one above  - showing the perception of the start of old age. I am left thinking – so what?

Here is an extract from the press release about the report

Regardless of their own age, respondents in countries with a higher proportion of older people were more positive, suggesting that societal attitudes shift as a population ages. Older people’s status was perceived to be higher in countries that had later state pension ages.


Age discrimination was personally experienced by about one third of all respondents, with the UK placed just below the average for all ESS countries.


Age discrimination was affected by a variety of individual characteristics: with ageism being experienced more by younger people, those who were less well educated, felt poorer, were not in paid employment or were living in urban areas.


Across all ESS countries the stereotypes of older people as friendly and competent were consistently affected by age, education and residential area, with the UK placed above average for friendliness and below average for competence for all ESS countries.


At the country-level older people being seen as a threat to the economy was influenced by economy-related characteristics, whereas, older people being seen as a threat to health services was affected by state pension age for men, i.e. a policy-related variable.

Maybe I am missing something? I think perhaps I am.

I thought it was strange the DWP should be involved in this sort of research until I saw how the guy responsible for pensions was spinning the research-- ‘The idea that 59 is old belongs in the past. We need to challenge our perceptions of what "old age" actually mean" I suspect this is code for.." we might have another bash at raising the pension age". Dick Stroud

All is not well in the UK Care Home market

Colliers International produce a regular review of the UK care home business. The most recent edition does not make for happy reading for all concerned in this market.

This is the report’s conclusion

Key performance indicators for the second half of 2010 illustrate the impact of the varied pressures on operators. Government spending cuts, slowing housing market, lack of bank funding and a continued focus on alternative forms of elderly accommodation, rather than the traditional care home model, is putting pressure on profitability.

With below-inflation Local Authority baseline fees settlements, there is continuing pressure on operators to keep care standards high while keeping costs down. We are at a turning point where real average weekly fees will begin to fall due to government funding cuts. For those operators that have minimal exposure to the private pay market, diversification into alternative forms of care or a focus on specialised services, such as dementia care services, will become increasingly important.

The one ray of hope that Colliers offers the industry is that the financial pressures that are being put on local government might persuade them from attempting to run their own care homes and give responsibility to the private sector.

There is a perverted logic that still pervades parts of central and local government (and far too many UK voters) that it is better to offer the public an inferior service rather than allow the private sector to operate and supply cheaper and more efficient services. The fact they might make a ‘profit’ means they are somehow evil.

The report highlights this fact – another quote.

Local Authorities across the UK – operate approximately 920 homes (elderly and/or dementia) with circa 30,600 beds. These homes are filled in priority to those in privately operated homes despite many of these homes being of relatively poor quality. Colliers believes that many of these Local Authority homes are no longer fit for purpose, furthermore Local Authority operated homes tend to be much less efficient than their peers in the private sector. It is estimated that the average weekly fee per resident is £400 more in a Local Authority home (in some cases, this equates to almost 100% additional cost over the alternatives).

Let’s hope that the recession puts an end to this dogma and that common sense prevails. However, it is going to be a tough time in the care industry for the foreseeable future. Dick Stroud

China’s census results predict a looming ageing ‘disaster’

The graph, taken from the Economist, says it all.

China is heading fast towards all of the ageing issues faced by Japan and old-Europe.

I know it has been repeated ad nauseam but it still seems to have some truth to it :“China will get old before it gets rich.“

Like most of these one-liners, they conceal a vastly complex issue. But, at the global level there is no denying that the composition of China’s population is getting older, fast.

This article from the Brookings Institute provides more details about the census results. Any rumors about Stannah Stairlifts opening a Beijing office were not started by me.

I have already written about this subject but I couldn't resist publishing this graph. Dick Stroud

A surfeit of information about all things digital

Lots and lots of things about digital and older Americans. Almost too much information for me to handle.

Well done to AARP for publishing the documents.
Connected living for social change
Healthy home

I have selected this chart that originated from Forrester (Sept 2010). I thought it was interesting to see the small difference between the uptake of smartphones between older and younger boomers.

There is also a very interesting blog posting from Laurie Orlov that is well worth reading. Dick Stroud

Well, well, well – eons.com has changed owners

I have only just got around to reading this press release, dated end April. After such a big-bang start and having burned through lots and lots of money, eons.com has been sold.

Here is what the press release says.

Crew Media, the media services company owned and operated by Continuum Crew announced today that it has acquired the baby boomer-focused online social networking site Eons.com and baby boomer online advertising network Eons BOOM Media.

Founded in 2006 by Jeff Taylor, the creator of Monster.com, Eons is an online social networking site serving the baby boomer generation. Eons has more than 800,000 registered users, and is the anchor site in the Eons BOOM Media network of 26 websites, whose combined monthly visits are more than four million.

"Members of the large Eons community are loyal, actively participate in groups and engage one another – presenting a great opportunity to collect insights and deliver those to advertisers,” said Lori Bitter, President and CEO, Continuum Crew.

I would love to know what the deal was on the purchase. Let’s just say I doubt if very much money exchanged hands.

Anyway, I wish Lori Bitter all good luck with the venture. She has been a great ambassador for boomer marketing and if anybody can make a few bob out of eons I think it will be her.

I and one or two of my US mates have said that age silo social networking is never going to make  money. Looks like we were right. Dick Stroud

What is happening to American households?

I reckon marketers focus too much of their attention on the stats about consumer numbers and types and not enough about what is happening with households.

There are some interesting insights in the new Nielsen report: The New Digital American Family: Understanding family dynamics, media and purchasing behavior trends.

Households with young children are now history. Well not exactly history but fast contracting. The family marketplace is just 33.6%.

But there is something else happening. The family household is becoming less homogeneous, less educated and less affluent target audience.

By the mid-2030s, the share of households with children is expected to decline further to between 25-30%. The family household is not going to look like it does today due to the ferocious projected growth of multi-cultural households.

Nielsen projections suggest that the majority of families with children will be multi-cultural before the end of this decade. Fewer than half will be native-born, non-Hispanic white. Families with children already register more than 40% multi-cultural. The proportion is even higher at 47% among those families with a head of household age 33 or younger and soars to 61% for the lowest income families.

The UK is not that much different. Already one in four babies are born to a foreign mother, a rise of 11% since 1998. Foreign children will outnumber indigenous children in Britain by 2021.


I didn’t say anything about the largest group of US households. You can work out the implication that has for marketers for yourself. Dick Stroud

Dick Stroud rambling on about all things apps and iPad

When I was in Dublin I had a TV interview about all of this ‘i’ stuff and why it is such an important development for older people.

Having watched it again I think it covers most of the points, however, I must stop repeating myself. Put it down to age. Dick Stroud

One grandparent web sites dies and another is born

It was sad that the BeGrand web site came to the end of the line. My chums at Digital Unite did a great job with the venture unfortunately the same could not be said for all of the other partners involved. But that is another story.

Just as one web site for grandparents closes another has opened. This one has the might of mumsnet behind it. You will not be surprised that the format of gransnet and mumsnet are identical.


Gransnet’s editor is Geraldine Bedell who wrote and excellent blog called Agebomb. I am certain that she will do a great job in this new venture.

I wish them all the best of luck and will follow their progress with great interest. Dick Stroud

UK and US media is showing its age

In Britain people aged 60+ spent more on pop-music albums in 2009 than did teenagers or people in their 20s, according to the BPI, a trade group.

Sony Music’s biggest-selling album worldwide last year was “The Gift”, by Susan Boyle, a 50-year-old Scot.

And what has happened to music has also happened to other forms of entertainment.

These two charts from the Economist (subscription only) tell it all. ‘Traditional’ media is ageing. The industry may not like and may try and ignore it but that is how it is. Dick Stroud

Now this is what I call a census

The UK has just had, what is likely to be its last census. China is beginning to publish the findings of its census of its 1.34 billion population. Now that is what I call a census.

I have taken these figiures from the Economist blog. Sorry it is subcription only.

The average annual population growth from 2001-10 was 0.57%, just over half the rate from 1991-2000.

The numbers imply that China’s work force will in a few years start declining, and the “dependency” ratio—the proportion of the population made up of the young and elderly—will start to climb. Already, the proportion of people aged over 60 has increased from 10.4% in 2000 to 13.3% now. Those under 16 now make up 16.6% of the total, down from 23% in 2000.

The stresses in China are immense. An ageing population – a population moving from rural to urban areas and one that is demanding the consumer goodies that we in the West take for granted. An of course it is sitting on a mountain of US dollars.

Undoubtedly, China and the rest of AsiaPac is where the action is going to be but I don’t think it is going to be a smooth ride. Dick Stroud

Number of Future Centenarians by Age Group

Youngsters in the UK reckon they are getting a bad time of things being born into a world full of oldies that they are going to have to support.

Not for one second do I think these figures are accurate but if they are roughly right then our under-16s should be concerned about their own old age since it looks like roughly three times a many as those aged 66+ today are likely to make a hundred.

The numbers are terrifying. Dick Stroud

Understanding the iPad: Insights and opportunities

What more is there to write about the iPad other than why people really buy them and how they really use them?

There is a lot of personal views but very little hard research on the subject. A report from McKinsey has been on my desk since Feb and I have only just got around to reading it.

The bottom line is that for lots of people the device is a home product that they use instead of their laptop, other than when they need to do some serious keyboard stuff. That makes sense to me.

If you need some stats, from an impeccable source, then I suggest you download the report.

Interestingly, but not really as surprise, lots of the things people didn’t like about the product have been sorted with the iPad2.

I liked the final sentence.

Predicting the future is a good way to be proved wrong. What is certain, though, is that tablets’ journey has only just begun

You cannot argue with that. Dick Stroud

Aviva - well done. Aviva – wake up to social networking.

First the good news. Aviva has published another issue of its excellent report about the state of the finances of the UK’s 50-plus. Doesn’t make very happy reading, but it confirms the patterns that have been emerging over the past 12 months.

Now the bad news. For some idiotic reason, Aviva password lock the pdf document so it is impossible to copy any of the text. Come on guys, copying is good. Copying and publication is what it is all about. Instead I have the option of re-keying the text (daft) or taking a screen scrape.

I chose the latter. Sorry but you will have to click to read the image.







The deteriorating finances of the majority of the younger-old and the continuing financial resilience of the 15-20% (The Charmed Generation) comes out in this and the most recent Saga analysis. Dick Stroud

Design for goals and behaviors, aptitude and attitude, rather than generation

I reckon the title of this blog posting pretty much sums up most of 50-plus marketing. It’s a pity I didn’t think of the phrase.

I found it in a presentation given by John McRee an usability architect with a company called EffectiveUI.

I think it would be worth your while to take a look since it contains a lot of very sensible advice. If you want to read an overview have a look at this article in DM News. Dick Stroud

When is Age Concern not Age UK? When it is Advant-Age.

When Age Concern and Help the Aged decided to get together, under the black cloud of the Heyday disaster, the resulting organization became Age UK, or at least I thought it did.

As you can see from the images, taken from a recent Age UK ad, it is not a simple as that. Age UK is a ‘force combining’ as well as something that works with third party companies – well really it means it is leveraging its brand to improve the chances of third parties selling.

Are you still with me?

Well just to add a pinch of ultra-confusion to the pot, a large number of the local Age Concerns didn’t like this idea and have decided to set-up their own business call Advant-Age.

All of this is going on at a time when charities are under the cosh as local authorities slash their funding. Cynics would say (including me) that LAs are doing this rather than tightening up their own notoriously inefficient and incompetent organisations – but that is another story.

Coming back to the Age Concern saga - you can read all about the machinations in this article from Third Sector.

When Age UK was formed the 320 local Age Concerns were given until the end of last month to decide whether or not to sign brand partnership agreements. Just over half have done so.

The creation of Advant-Age appears to undermine one of the main reasons for the merger: that the needs of older people were not best served by competing charities. If anything, there are now more organisations claiming to be the voice pitching for older people.

It must be hell out there as the funding pressure begins – don’t forget we have another 3-5 years of these cuts. Probably more.

The final result of all of this organisational strife is that all of the various groupings of age charities are selling like hell for the older consumer's business. How is this going to play when Government should be looking to deal with impartial voices, rather than those who are trying to outbid each other to sell stair lifts?

I totally understand why all of this is happening and feel very sorry for all concerned. Unfortunately, the bottom line is that just at a time when older people need a strong, clear, un-muddled voice to be fighting their corner they have exactly the opposite.

I never thought I would say it but the way things are going I can see that Saga ending up being the organisation that claims the thought leadership position for older people. The companies new PR push is very impressive.

The care providers are amateurish in their approach and as I have shown, the charities are at each other’s throats. What a bu**ers muddle. Dick Stroud