Our guest today is Charles Lowe who is the chief executive of Digital Health and Care Alliance (DACA), he is an expert in telehealth and telecare.

Throughout his career he has worked on technologies to support others. He shares with us how he wanted to open people’s eyes to recognise what technology can do to help people and how everybody can become digitally literate.

Growing up, Charles did voluntary work with his mother and saw firsthand the challenges faced by a broad range of people, particularly as they got older.

From a young child Charles had a passion for electronic engineering. In the late 1960s while still at school, he built a computer from scratch and developed a system to automatically open and close his bedroom window. After studying Material Science at Cambridge, he developed electronic solutions for a range of companies.
Over the years Charles has been involved in many initiatives, working with different organisations, to engage people of all ages to embrace digital technology, including “take your grandparent to school day”. He recognises the lives of people caring for their loved ones could be improved through access to computers – allowing them to improve their mental health by continuing to work whilst caring.

At BT he led the development of their intranet and was instrumental in developing the first commercial digital offering from BT, including digitalisation of the police force and local governments departments.

We talk about the huge speed at which new technologies are being introduced, and discuss whether we are actually making the best of them or moving on to new ideas too quickly? He highlights the importance of digital innovations that now allow patients to be monitored in their own homes, speeding up treatment times and reducing the pressures on hospital admissions. He emphasises the knock-on effect that people can remain in their own homes, doctors can focus on people they need to see in person and fewer people need to travel to be treated.

As you’ll hear, Charles believes that with effective implementation of current telecare and telehealth we can make the world a more inclusive place for everybody.

You can email Charles at charles.lowe@dhaca.org.uk

You can contact us at the following:
Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/
Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

Today’s guest on our podcast is Louise Thompson, who has set up the app Myfolks.

She tells us about growing up in a particularly poor area in the west end of Newcastle, in the North East of England. Louise’s first job was at the Freeman Hospital where she was involved in some cardiovascular research that was published in a medical journal. Through this work she managed to gain admission to Northumbria University, where she graduated with a degree in Law.

After gaining an MSc, while working in a senior corporate leadership position in Hampshire, Louise’s parents, who lived in the North East, became ill with dementia. There followed a desperate time, travelling backwards and forwards to support her parents, whilst working full time and managing the family home.

She talks about the issues her parents had, and although not needing personal care, they did need practical and emotional support. This is when she realised that she had to find some help but couldn’t find any.

So, she began to think about creating an app that would connect people who could provide support for those families who couldn’t book ahead and needed it in real time. Then, the app Myfolks was created.

Louise shares the challenges she had from the time taken to set up the app, the cost and the issues of being a solopreneur.

She shares that one in seven of us is now caring while still working, and how it has a disproportionate effect on women in the workforce. In addition, there can be even greater challenges for the smaller number of men who are carers, and the impact it can have on their ‘masculine’ identity and their self-esteem.

She talks about the important need for employers to understand when their employees are struggling with caring responsibilities for their parents, highlighting that it’s not just the pull on their time, but also the emotional strain.

Presently Myfolks is in the North East, Cumbria, St Helens, Warrington, Humberside, Lincolnshire and Sussex. Louise aims to focus on the coastal towns and the outskirts of large cities, because they tend to have a higher population of the elderly, and often have fewer services.

You can contact us at the following:
Louise Thompson: https://www.myfolks.uk/
Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/
Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

Today’s guest is Jules Robinson from The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents – ROSPA. Jules is a guest who has an interest and expertise in falls and fall prevention.

Previously having worked in social housing, Jules’ background is in health and safety, and now she is the falls engagement lead at ROSPA. They campaign for better design elements with Safer by Design and Safer Stairs. They also want to educate both the public and professionals, which they are doing through their Fall Fighters campaign.

Jules talks about how falls are a huge problem for everyone, but also about the attitude that falls are almost expected as you get older. In her previous job she was involved in a project looking at the reasons people have falls, and looking at how falls can in fact be prevented. She also talks about how falls can be trivialised, when in fact the consequences of falls can be far more serious for older and vulnerable adults.

We talk about the risk of falls, not only at home, but also in the workplace, and how it is partly through recognising dangerous situations and potential risks of falls due to the environment that people are in. Many people don’t recognise where risks are, and it’s about educating them to be more aware, though obviously in the workplace there are distinct regulations that the employer is responsible for.

Jules also reiterated several times about how fall prevention advice needs to be a person-centred thing, because we all behave and think differently. This was evident when talking about the different reactions people had to wearing lanyards or fall-prevention devices around their necks.

Although falls are something that any of us can have, it is the older people who Jules is particularly hoping to help with her Fall Fighters campaign.

Find out more about RoSPA
RoSPA’s fall prevention hub for general home safety advice on falls:
https://www.rospa.com/policy/home-safety/advice-and-information/falls-prevention-hub

The fall prevention project in social housing: https://www.trentanddove.org/news/new-research-shows-avoidable-falls-in-the-home-can-be-reduced-by-69-per-cent-891/

And the RoSPA fall prevention toolkit based on the social housing project:
https://www.rospa.com/policy/home-safety/advice-and-information/falls-prevention-hub/professional-falls-advice/falls-and-their-impact-on-social-housing

You can contact us at the following:
Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/
Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

Our podcast guest today is herself a podcaster – Adriane Berg.

Adriane has a fascinating background and has spent much of her life in front of a camera, microphone or in a courtroom as a lawyer; radio presenter, and a tv presenter. She was a pioneer of elder law, worked on US syndicated radio and hosted one of the first money programmes on CNN.

Less than a year ago she and her husband of 52 years set up The Ageless Traveler, which is born out of Adriane’s passion for travel and wanting to make lifelong travel easier for us all. She strongly believes that travel, tourism brings us to life no matter what our age, and wants to enable people to continue to travel throughout their life.

She shares how she was involved in one of the first TV shows to talk about financial planning, helping people to learn how to save for their retirement. Although she doesn’t like the word ‘retirement’ as you’ll hear.

Adriane explains various things people can overcome – one being how other people impose their fears on you.

We talk about how technology can be used to enhance the Ageless Travelers’ experiences. We also discuss how the travel industry needs to wake up to the fact that there will be 1.6 billion trips taken by people over 60 in the next 25 years – yet the focus of marketing is generally aimed towards younger people.

You can contact Adriane on her website: https://agelesstraveler.com/
Her free eBooks:

https://CaregiversTravelGuide.com

https://luxurytravelforless.info

You can contact us at the following:

Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/

Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

Our guest today is Louise Hunt Skelley PLY, a Paralympic wheelchair tennis athlete, who now has developed an exciting portfolio career. She is involved in a range of many different things, including commentary, tournament directing, consultancy, working with young people, and public speaking – all with a focus on disability, inclusion and sport.

Recently she has launched a new company, Enable Rise with another friend, Samantha Bullock, also a wheelchair tennis player. Louise talks about how their passion around inclusion in various areas made them realise they could join forces and work towards making everywhere inclusive.

Having been involved in sport from a young age, Louise talks about how taking part in tennis helped her socialise and made her feel both powerful and capable. Later it gave her opportunities to travel the world and meet other amazing people.

She talks about how her involvement in sport has opened many, many doors in her life in terms of her own confidence, but also in terms of raising her profile.

Louise also talks about her passion for tennis, explaining why she loves this sport specifically.

We talk about the gender gap in sport when Louise’s passion is that sport is for everyone. She thinks that boys and girls should have access to the range of all sports at school, from a young age; for example, not only girls play netball and only boys play football.

Whilst talking about the challenges involved in making sports more inclusive, we discuss how in fact people playing disabled sport need to have much broader skill sets to be able to play at an elite level. And then go on to talk about how these skills can be transferred to the workplace.

Louise explains very clearly what inclusion means to her; everyone should have the same experience, but for wheelchair users and people with disabilities, some adjustments need to be made. Therefore, it’s about managing a situation, so you get to the same outcome and the same experience.

You can contact us at the following:

Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/
Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

You can contact Louise at:

Mobile: 07733021123
Email: louiseannhunt55@gmail.com
Website: www.louisehunt.co.uk
Linked in: Louise Hunt Skelley PLY

Today’s guest, Gavin Neate, joined Guide Dogs for the blind, where he served as a mobility instructor for 18 years. Previously, he had spent 10 years as a military policeman.

During his time working as a mobility instructor, where he worked on people’s independent mobility, he became very involved in the entire process of helping clients find ways to interact with society. He recognised the many day to day challenges facing people and he wanted to help find solutions to those issues.

We discuss how much of the problem solving should be left to the problem holders. Gavin talks about how history is full of people who have invented solutions that didn’t necessarily answer problems, therefore, when it comes to inventing solutions to help people with their mobility problems, it is crucial that they are involved.

His has great advice to young innovators who want to help people: dedication, commitment, belief and the ability to keep going even if you have to give everything up because you truly believe in what you’re doing.

Gavin’s innovation is the WelcoMe app. The font of the last two letters of the word are changed so that when reading it, people see it as, welcome me. The reason behind this is that when it comes to customer service, and interacting with other humans, disabled people often feel they aren’t welcome.

He talks about how as a mobility instructor he would run ahead of whichever venue his client was visiting and talk to the people in that venue – telling them how to welcome that client. He would give them 5 bits of information that meant when the client walked through the door, they felt welcomed into the venue, and that the venue understood their needs

The WelcoMe app means people can communicate with staff members before walking through the door of a venue.

We talked about our focus for this week being Disabled Access Day and asked Gavin why he thought we needed the day? Part of his answer was it should be every day, not just one day and he sees the day as one where you should be looking at what you’ve done in the past year and what you are planning to do this coming year.

You can contact us at the following:

Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/

Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

You can contact Gavin at Website https://www.wel-co.me/

Links https://linktr.ee/welcome.cs

Gavin Neate https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavin-neate?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app

Our guest today, Anthony Blackburn has a passion for golf – but not just for playing the game… he has set up Golf in Society.

Starting his business six years ago, presently he has 23 venues where golf clubs are put at the heart of local communities. What that means is, they are open for people facing challenges later in life, for many different reasons and they are given a great day out at a local golf club. There are two and a half thousand golf clubs in the UK – imagine if those spaces could be used as national venues…

As an entrepreneur Anthony aims to have a network of age friendly golf venues across the UK, but at the moment they are mainly in the north and Scotland. The company have regional leads – people who organise the sessions in their area. These regional leads often come to Golf in Society after their first career – bringing their experience and talent with them.

Golf in Society not only support people with dementia, Parkinson’s, stroke, loneliness and mental health issues, but also gives unpaid carers a well-deserved respite break.

Anthony talks to us about how people underestimate golf, thinking of it as elitist, very expensive and a pastime for the middle-class. He is breaking down those perceptions and talks about its health and wellbeing benefits. Golf enhances strength, balance, grip, lets people enjoy the outdoors, provides fresh air, gives opportunities to socialize, respite care – and so much more.

We compare the current rate for respite care and other therapies to attending one of his Golf in Society sessions – you may be surprised at the positive outcome.

We also talk about transportation – which can be a huge barrier if you have a chronic illness – and how it is one of the challenges society needs to be overcome.

You can find Anthony on:
Website: https://golfinsociety.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-blackburn-37732a170/

You can contact us at the following:
Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/
Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

Our guest on today’s podcast is Jane Cooper, the founder and managing director of Access and Inclusion UK. They help businesses and destinations to understand the type of challenges that people with disabilities or accessibility requirements might have, and importantly, give them solutions to overcome them, through training, or whatever solution is required – thus providing accessibility for all.

Jane’s passion for her company is based on her own personal experience – of having her eldest child, Megan, born with an extremely rare chromosomal condition, and then also being diagnosed as autistic. After coming to terms with her daughter’s condition and learning how to cope with a life that was suddenly completely different to the one she had expected, she moved away from her previous career and into the one she has now.

Jane shares with us that people with autism are not all exactly the same. Like the rest of us, everyone is individual, and how one person behaves is not necessarily how someone else will behave. She also points out another misconception – that learning disabilities and autism are not linked! You can be autistic and not have learning difficulties.

She does talk about how she finds the autistic world fascinating, because of all the different ways people can be affected. And as she explains this is why it’s so hard to give advice to parents of a child newly diagnosed with autism.

Jane talks very clearly about sensory stimulation and how some autistic people are overstimulated or under-stimulated by different things. And she also explains how she learnt to deal with her daughter’s meltdowns – which was the complete opposite of what she had expected to do!

This is a fascinating insight into living with someone with autism.

You can contact Jane via

Her website : https://accessandinclusion.com/
Email: jane@accessandinclusion.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-cooper-accessandinclusionuk/
X: @accessandincuk

You can contact us at the following:

Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/
Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/