Your Community the BIG Debate 2020/2025
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At the AVOW (Association of Voluntary Organisations in Wrexham) the Chief Officer John Gallanders issued a challenge to everyone present to think about the future of Wrexham in 5 and 10 years time . 2020 and 2025.
AVOW want to know what people will think their communities will be like in the future, what they thunk volunteers will be doing and what charities will be doing to help others. The challenge today was the commencement of other activities in the Autumn with AVOW and other partners looking at how people in their communities will rise to many challenges — 10, 000 new homes, many 1,000’s more people over the age of 60, a Council with reduced services, services being delivered by volunteers. All of these things and many more factors will effect the every day lives of all residents in the County Borough. Please post your thoughts on the Forum or email [email protected].“Social isolation” is one of the big subjects that has been raised, but not necessarily talked about enough. Places where people who are retired and can meet, such as post offices, libraries, community centres …must be apart of the future, and the cost as opposed to care in the home for social isolation and mental health and associated physical conditions …must surely be affordable …
In the past decade many people have retired around 60 – 65 years old and felt able to become active within the Voluntary Sector. The next decade will see the the state pension age rise gradually and many more people working into their 70’s. This is likely to impact on the Voluntary Sector.
The economy, and businesses, are surely an important part of caring for the community. Thriving businesses with long term prosecpts, feed other benefits back into communities. What economy are we aspiring to to help these big challenges? How can business get involved, in a way that does’t affect their core role of creating product, wealth, and high earning jobs?
This could develop into an interesting thread as many of us on the thread are often very imaginative in our views.
I thin k one of the things that will be changing is that as people live longer we might end up with ‘young’ older people looking after parents as well as being expected to be the Grandparents providing care for young children whilst parents are working. If this becomes the norm then many of the people who traditionally would volunteer will be committed to family caring roles.
People who have had to work longer before retirement may decide they want a ‘gap’ period before taking on family care responsibilities.
As people live longer so family wealth (if any) will take longer to be passed on to a younger generation which means the younger families may end up with paying mortgages for the whole period whereas not long ago these debts could be cleared with an inheritance.It would help to see a list of all the services that agencies provide to care for people …local authorities, health care …how much is spent on each area …and any analysis of what people may need in 2020 and 2025 and how many.
With the 10000 new homes, what type of homes do they need to be, will they create easy access for example, and will they be part of communities that can give support through neighbours and enrich peoples lives.
As a sort of side issue to this even although there are a lot more people living to an older age the most common age for people to die is still people who are in their 60,s ..
@wxm 14081 wrote:
The economy, and businesses, are surely an important part of caring for the community. Thriving businesses with long term prosecpts, feed other benefits back into communities. What economy are we aspiring to to help these big challenges? How can business get involved, in a way that does’t affect their core role of creating product, wealth, and high earning jobs?
….I thought the man was discussing what the voluntary sector could be doing in 10-15 years time ?
It’s a given that the business sector will play a part in displacing public sector or charitable provision. I’m not of course suggesting that all businesses are on the “make” in looking for opportunities. Some do a fine job I would imagine; and they do provide employment for many.
I would imagine that one of the biggest challenges for the Voluntary sector will be to create a positive harmony across the various community components that will be Wrexham in the future. There will be an influx of people from outside of the area and already there are significant changes in the retail face of Wrexham with all sorts of variable European offers to the Wrexham public.
This will have a significant effect in Education, the workplace and various aspects of our community. Most of it will be good but it will need managing subtly. Already the development of the Welsh language legislation in Wrexham has implications for disharmony and grafting a fresh set of potential problems on top will provoke thought on the whole subject.
Churches, Charities, Voluntary bodies and whatever Council still survives will all have to play a positive role in shaping the future so that the evils of social non-cohesion and racism don’t arise in our community. Bodies like the town centre Forum need to reach out to incomers and appreciate that being reactive will not be a good option.
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