Sarah Housden
A lot of people nowadays look at older people as a burden to society. There
is a tendency to see people with dementia and people living longer as a problem
economically because we need wage earners. Older people are valuable assets in
our society.
Ed Melia
That’s Sarah Housden, author of the NIACE publication, “Reminiscence and
Lifelong Learning”.
Sarah Housden
My book takes the view that older people are an incredible resource, both to
society and specifically in a learning environment. I focus very closely on the
resource that older peoples memories represent and the book is chiefly about how
those memories can be used to enhance learning by sharing knowledge, by sharing
experience.
Ed Melia
What good examples have you got that illustrate how well reminiscence works.
Sarah Housden
In the book I give an example of a project which we carried out in one
residential home in Norwich were there were no activities until we went in, and
we delivered eight sessions of reminiscence work. During that time, people began
to come out of themselves; to talk to each other; and to the carers. By the end
of the eight weeks, there were examples of people who had never been heard to
talk before, talking. I’m not saying they had lost the power of speech, but they
had been so withdrawn and so low in self esteem, and confidence that they have
given up on life.
The really wonderful thing here is that not only was learning shared between the
people in the group, but also with the care workers which was then able to
inform care planning to make sure that the care provided was relevant to the
older people in the residential home. Also visitors and relatives were able to
get back their grandma’s; their parents and see them come to life again.
Ed Melia
How important do you think these lessons are to learn with the ageing
profile of our country?
Sarah Housden
I think reminiscence is one way of exploring and revealing the worth of
older people because people come out with the knowledge and experience, the
wisdom of years and they can share that with all kinds of people in a way which
show they have worth, that they are a tremendous resource – just for being
themselves. This is to me the whole point of adult education – it is about
showing the value of worth on individuals what ever their situation in life.
Ed Melia
What impact and influence do you hope your book has?
Sarah Housden
The impact that I hope it has is that adult education institutions and
organisations will begin to set up projects and explore ways of working with
older people. In order to spread the message that older people have value – that
memories are incredibly worthwhile. It’s worth listening to older people. The
store of knowledge and experience they have is something which we cannot learn
from books; that we cannot learn from television programmes but by learning from
individuals in a face to face way we can get a real sense of the past ; a real
sense of what is important in life and what it was like to live through things
like the Second World War.