Scotland is ageing – and fast. While longer lives are a testament to progress, they also reveal growing cracks in care services, workforce sustainability and rights-based support for older people. Gaps in provision, pressures on unpaid carers and fractured funding arrangements pose urgent questions about quality, fairness and continuity of care. Therefore, we must reconsider how we deliver, fund and reform care for older people across Scotland’s public, private and third sectors.
The care of older people stands at a critical crossroads. With a population aged over 75 projected to increase by nearly 30% by 2030, existing care infrastructure – already under immense strain – faces new and escalating demand. Unpaid carers remain essential yet undervalued, while staff recruitment and retention in professional care continue to suffer from low pay and limited progression.
The Scottish Government’s National Care Service proposals marked potential for a major policy shift, but clarity on local delivery, accountability and funding remains elusive. Meanwhile, care homes, home care and community health services are all seeking stability amidst reforms, workforce shortages and rising expectations.
Older people and their families require care that is not only safe and compassionate, but also person-centred and consistent, regardless of postcode. Questions of equity, dignity, independence and human rights are now central to Scotland’s care debate.
This conference will bring together health and social care policy, delivery, advocacy and inspection to reflect on Scotland’s current system and chart future reform that works in practice – and not just in policy.
This conference examines the challenges we face in providing consistent high quality care for older people in Scotland against the backdrop of multiple population, financial and service delivery pressures. It will focus on three themes:
Topics to be discussed
Who should attend
This conference will be relevant for anyone involved in the care and support of older people in Scotland in home, medical, residential, care and other settings. This includes:
Minister for Social Care and Mental Wellbeing
Scottish Government
Chief Executive
Age Scotland
Care and Wellbeing Innovation Advisor
Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre
Professor in Ageing and Health
Glasgow Caledonian University
Tom Arthur MSP
Minister for Social Care and Mental Wellbeing
Scottish Government
Born in Paisley in 1985, he was first elected to the Scottish Parliament for the seat of Renfrewshire South at the 2016 election, holding the seat in 2021. He joined the Scottish Government as Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth in May 2021.
Mr Arthur was raised in Barrhead, East Renfrewshire, where he was educated at Cross Arthurlie Primary and Barrhead High School. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music then later Master of Music from the University of Glasgow. Before entering politics, he worked as a company director, freelance piano teacher and keyboardist. He was appointed as Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance in March 2023 and Minister for Employment and Investment in May 2024.
Katherine Crawford
Chief Executive
Age Scotland
Katherine joined Age Scotland as Chief Executive Officer in July 2023, bringing 20 years of experience in the charity sector working with Parkinson’s UK. Katherine has seen first-hand the challenges older people can face through that work and it is seeing the impact of charities like ours that energises and inspires her.
Bringing experience of influencing and campaigning at the Scottish government, working with volunteers and colleagues in developing and delivering services to benefit people wherever they live, Katherine is keen to ensure every single older person in Scotland is confident that their voice is heard and knows that Age Scotland is here for them.
Living in Fife with her husband, she enjoys getting out to the beach with her lively re-homed Labrador and playing lots of social tennis. Katherine has one son, who is bouncing between home and college.
Dr Tara French
Care and Wellbeing Innovation Advisor
Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre
Tara is passionate about genuine co-design and human rights based approaches to delivering sustainable transformation in social care and health, with a focus on equality and inclusion.
She has an interdisciplinary background in academia, policy and practice and her work has spanned all sectors of health and social care - NHS, social care, third and independent, government, academia and industry partners.
Tara is known for thought leadership in digital social care and health, where her collaborative work has led to the creation of the 'Care Technologist' role in Social Care, the co-production of human rights principles for digital health and care and has contributed to driving forward the value of person-owned data and social care data in service design.
She has expertise in leading large scale, complex transformation programmes using a combination of strategic, systems and service design, and change management approaches. Her experience lies predominantly within health and social care transformation having spent over a decade working with all sectors in Scotland on national and local programmes mainly in the context of digital innovation and health and social care integration.
Tara is a regular contributor to national and international conferences, events and webinars as a chair, panelist, invited speaker. Published work includes over 70 academic outputs and a range of frameworks, visions and provocations e.g.
https://www.dhi-scotland.com/resources/digital-imagination%E2%80%99-series%3A-imagining-a-future-virtual-clinic-experience
She is also an experienced choir leader and community musician. Since 2010 she have led a community choir, Sing for Life Speyside, back in her hometown. The choir brings together people from across Speyside and Moray and aims to support wellbeing through social connection and singing.
Dawn Skelton (Professor)
Professor in Ageing and Health
Glasgow Caledonian University
Dawn Skelton is Professor of Ageing and Health in the Department of Physiotherapy and Paramedicine. She is a member of the Falls and Frailty programme within the Ageing Well Research Group. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.
As an Exercise Physiologist, she has a keen interest in exercise rehabilitation within a falls prevention scope, from the hospital-based physiotherapy delivery to the community-based specialist exercise instructor provision. Her current research ranges from motivation and patient preference to engaging the very frail, increasing adherence to long-term exercise and working with the pre-frail to prevent poor outcomes later. Implementation, fidelity and quality of evidence-based interventions when delivered in different settings is also her passion. Whilst specialising in randomised controlled trials, she often leads mixed methods studies (including the MRC-funded Seniors USP: Understanding Sedentary Patterns) and is a lead and co-author on multiple Cochrane Systematic Reviews.
Recent research includes NIHR-funded programme grants in exercise as an intervention for frailty (HomeHealth), falls prevention (VIOLET, PhISICAL, Innovate UK MIRA). Work on co-creation to improve acceptability has been funded by Wellcome (Strong and Balanced Offer) and EC Horizon 2020 ITN (HealthCascade). She works closely with colleagues in Norway and Ireland on exercise following discharge from hospital and those receiving care at home, and colleagues in Sweden on smartphone provision of falls prevention exercise.
Current doctoral supervision includes a range of projects related to falls and frailty, such as conveyance to hospital following a fall, functional decline in hospital-at-home settings, functional fitness in older adults, and physiotherapy student led exercise as part of a falls pathway.
She chaired the Royal Osteoporosis Society’s Statement on Exercise and Osteoporosis (2018) and the Older People Panel for the UK’s update of the Physical Activity for Health Guidelines (2019). She is currently Chair of the British Geriatrics Society Rehabilitation Group and is part of the Community Rehabilitation Alliance and the National Falls Prevention Co-ordination Group within Public Health England. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Older People and Frailty Policy Research Unit (OPFPRU) funded by the NIHR.
She recently received the British Geriatrics Society Marjory Warren Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in translating falls prevention research into practice. She has also been honoured with an honorary medical doctorate (MD) from Umea University for her work in functional exercise with older people. She is also Director of the not-for-profit training company Later Life Training.
Dawn is also an Honorary Professor with NHS Lanarkshire, where she is a member of the Falls Prevention Strategy Group.
Her research interests includes falls and fracture prevention, sedentary behaviour interventions, frailty, foot health and vision in relation to falls, behavioural strategies, motivation to exercise, implementation science, quality of life, and older adults.
You can watch her Professorial Lecture You can't teach an old dog new tricks - or can you? by clicking on the link.
Book delegate places or purchase video recording.
