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This book, by highly respected author, educator and adviser, Neil Thompson, offers a much more grounded approach to the complex issues involved. Part One provides a clear and helpful overview of key issues relating to promoting well-being – our own and other people’s, while Part Two offers 101 practical tips. This book will be ideal for anyone wanting to make a positive difference, whether in the caring professions, in a management or human resources context or just in their own personal lives.This is not a book that gives you instructions. The main aim is to give you food for thought, to support you in thinking through a number or key issues, warning you of pitfalls to avoid and helping you…

I often encounter situations on training courses where people say things like: ‘We can’t do that; the form won’t let us’. Of course, forms are a way of recording and collating information and therefore have an important part to play. However, recognizing the value of forms and allowing them to dictate our practice are two different things. If the forms help, that’s great, but if they are framed in such a way that they are unhelpful, shouldn’t we be changing the forms rather than changing our practice to suit the form? So, an important question to ask is: How do we get a form changed? What are the feedback mechanisms we can use to let the appropriate people know that…

Over the past decade, the narrative around inequality has changed dramatically. Inequality is now widely accepted as one of the – if not the – biggest issue of the 21st century. Think tanks and charities produce endless research and reports on inequality and its effects, but real people’s voices and stories of inequality specifically are not well evidenced in this work. There is currently no platform or forum providing information or access to the lived experience of inequality or its everyday impacts in the UK, especially not in an accessible way. There is also a general lack of shared knowledge about what it is like to experience inequality everyday, what that includes and how its specificities range across different contexts. We think…

Britain is one of the most age-segregated countries in the world with divisions between generations increasing over the last decade, according to a report. The report by United for All Ages, a social enterprise that works to bring together old and young, calls for urgent action to end what it calls the “age apartheid” dividing the country. It says people often have little contact with other generations outside their own families. Divisions have grown, it says, partly as a result of housing market trends, with wealth concentrated among older generations who tend to live in towns and rural areas while younger people gravitate towards cities. Click here to read more

he menopause is a natural stage of life for women, usually in their late forties/early fifties. It can also happen earlier or later. For many women symptoms last about four years, but in some cases can last longer - up to 12 years. Part of the process includes what is termed the 'perimenopause' when a woman's body is starting to change in the build up to the menopause. The perimenopause usually starts in the mid-forties, but can start earlier or later and last several years. The perimenopause is not the same as an early menopause. Perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms already affect a substantial number of workers. That number is expected to grow considerably, with more older workers forecast to stay…

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