Writing about health
My full-time job is a researcher at the Centre for Ageing and Mental Health at Staffordshire University. I work on projects that try to evaluate health and social care services. The sorts of services I work with are those for people who are vulnerable or at risk because they are elderly, or have mental health problems, or because they have learning disabilities. Many different local authorities and health organsations in England provide services in a great many ways. My job has been to advise on how well they are serving the public. Its a complex job, and involves interviewing people of all sorts as well as counting heads. At the moment I'm working with the NHS and the Prison Service on ways to address some of the mental health problems experienced by older men in prison. There are around 2000 older men and women (mostly men) in prison in England, and they are the fastest growing part of the prison population. They're often in for serious crimes - drugs, violence, sexual offences. More and more of them will become very old and some will die. Most of them try to sit out their sentences by keeping out of sight.
I have published two articles on the subject: Growing Old in Prison for Generations Review, and Prison: It's In Your Head for Inside Time, a monthly newspaper for prisoners and families, which goes to all prisons and secure establishments and has a circulation of more than 46,000
In 2003 I wrote a report for Age Concern England about the problems that older people face living in the countryside, called The Hidden Store. Not everyone who lives in a rural environment is well off, and those who are poor, of whom the elderly are the most likely, are often invisible within the picture postcard image of bucolic bliss. Yet it is older people who provide the 'glue' that holds rural society together by doing much of the voluntary work, from running day centres to parish councils to the local cricket team. A big conference was held in London shortly afterwards this report was published. I wrote a chapter on the subject for The Ageing Countryside: the Growing Older Population of Rural England, which was published by Age Concern Books.
You can find links to many of my articles and reports on Social Care Online.