Robin Means is a Professor of Health and Social Care in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of the West of England. He is President of the British Society of Gerontology and an elected member of the Academy of Social Sciences. His research interests relate primarily to older people in such areas as the meaning of 'home' and 'community' in later life, as well as issues relating to inter-agency working to support those with health and care needs.

From 2009-2012, Robin was Deputy Director of a research programme on civic engagement and older people in rural areas, which was funded through the New Dynamics of Ageing initiative that was supported by all the Research Councils and administered through ESRC. He is co-author of Community Care: Policy and Practice (Palgrave), which has reached its fourth edition.


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Sarah Pickup is President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services. Sarah, who is Director of Health and Community Services for Hertfordshire County Council, has previously served as ADASS Vice President, Honorary Secretary and National Lead for Carers.

Sarah is currently co-chair of one of the Champion Groups taking forward work on the Prime Minister's Challenge on Dementia. She graduated from Sussex University with a degree in Economics and concentrated on finance and resource issues in the early stages of her career before taking up her current directorship. A member of CIPFA, she also spent some time as Chair of the ADASS Resources Committee and recently chaired the Association's Resource Workstream.

Presentation: Engaged in older age

Our duty to older people as a society extends beyond health and social care and into a wider culture change: an increased recognition of all that older people have to offer, and increased support for them to fulfil their potential and lead active lives embedded within their local communities. In what way does the Care and Support White Paper broach these needs, and what role can staff within health and care services play in supporting these changes?

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Dr Clare Gerada is a London-based GP and Chair of Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners. She is the first female Chair for over half a century.
She has held a number of local and national leadership positions including Senior Medical Adviser to the Department of Health. She is Medical Director of the largest practitioner health programme in the country and she has published a number of academic papers, articles, books and chapters.

Clare has been a GP since 1992, when she became a partner for the Hurley Clinic in South London. The practice started life in 1969 – and remains on its current site – on the ground floor of a 19-storey housing estate in Lambeth.
Clare has a long involvement with the RCGP; she was previously Vice Chair of College Council and past Chair of the Ethics Committee. She established the RCGP's groundbreaking Substance Misuse Unit and also led on the strategic and logistical delivery of the RCGP Annual National Conference.

Prior to general practice, Clare worked in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital in South London, specialising in substance misuse. She was awarded an MBE for services to medicine and substance misuse. In 2012, she was presented with the National Order of Merit award in Malta for distinguishing herself in the field of health.

Presentation: Out of hospitals and into communities: Making every contact count

With older people currently accounting for 70% of occupied hospital beds and a government drive to shift the later life care paradigm out of hospitals and into communities, what can primary and community care do to prevent avoidable admissions, keeping people for as long as possible in a home environment?

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Ruthe Isden is the Public Services Programme Manager at Age UK, leading the organisation's work across health, social care and equalities and human rights in later life. Ruthe's work includes the Partnership on Dignity in Care, the Richmond Group of Charities' work on long-term conditions and the Care in Crisis campaign. Prior to joining Age UK, Ruthe worked as an advisor on health and care within Parliament and professional health bodies.

Presentation: Promoting equality in elderly care provision

From October 2012, patients have the right to sue if they have been denied care based on age alone. What does this mean for the way that staff within health and social care settings work? How can we ensure that all people can receive a personal, fair and diverse service based on their individual needs rather than their age?

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Jocelyn Cornwell directs The Point of Care at the King's Fund, a programme of work combining policy analysis and research with training and practical support for clinical teams working to improve patients' experience of care.

Jocelyn originally trained as a medical sociologist and ethnographer and worked in academic research. She has worked in the NHS, as a manager of community health services, and in regulation at the Audit Commission, the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI) and the Department of Health.

Jocelyn is Visiting Professor, Centre for Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Division of Experimental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Imperial College London, and a trustee of the Picker Institute Europe.


Presentation: Revolutionary service design and delivery: Transforming the care experience of older patients

With recent research suggesting that cognitive decline may be positively correlated with time spent in hospital amongst the elderly, how can we create a care environment that is not only medically efficacious, but also conducive to psychological and emotional wellbeing? The King's Fund Point of Care Programme is implementing innovative techniques such as Experience-Based Co-Design and rounds purely for social and emotional issues to improve the care experience for patients and staff alike.

This talk will offer insights and lessons learned from this initiative, with suggestions for its specific application with elderly and frail patients.

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Anita Lightstone is Programme Director for the UK Vision Strategy, providing leadership and support for its implementation. In addition to this role, Anita has recently been appointed Interim Chief Operations Officer for VISION 2020 (UK) Ltd.
The UK Vision Strategy is a VISION 2020 (UK) Ltd cross sector initiative, led by RNIB, to improve eye care and sight loss services across the UK. One recent success of this collaborative partnership approach has been the recognition of the eye health within the Public Health Outcomes Framework.
Anita is a member of the Department of Health's Eye Care Strategy Group, established in support of the aims of the UK Vision Strategy. Previously, she worked as a senior lecturer at the Institute of Optometry and was also a clinical adviser for the NHS National Eye Care Pathway Programme. In recognition of her contribution to sector, Anita has been awarded a life fellowship by the College of Optometrists.
Anita is a passionate advocate of user engagement and integrated partnership working.

Presentation: Vision for the future – why preventing sight loss in the elderly must be a priority

The presentation will cover the impact of sight loss and the implications across the health economy (including public health and social care), the impact of demographic changes and reducing preventable sight loss. It will then cover the UK Vision Strategy and the role that each and everyone at the conference has in addition to what needs to happen to transform the approach to preventable sight loss in the UK.

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Margaret trained as a nurse at the Queen Elizabeth School of Nursing following a degree in Environmental and Health Physics.
She spent many years working with frail older people, and multidisciplinary and multi-agency teams in elderly and general medicine, orthopaedics and trauma. She is now Lead Nurse for Older Adults and leads the Dignity and Older People's Champions project at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. This won the Nursing Times Awards for Care of Older People in 2011 and featured in the Commission on Dignity in Care for Older People report "Delivering Dignity" 2012.
Margaret's passion and commitment has been shaped by the experience of caring for family members with dementia and strokes. Current projects focus on the care of vulnerable people and their carers in an acute hospital setting, in particular those with dementia, delirium, learning and physical disabilities.
She completed an MA in Gerontology at the University of Keele and Lectures at Birmingham University and Birmingham City University.

Presentation: Dignity for all

Taking dignified care from the realm of best practice to standard provision across health and social services is a necessary but difficult task in a sector in which the workforce is under great pressure in time and funds. One such example of best practice is the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust's Dignity and Older People's Champions project, which won the Nursing Times Awards for Care of Older People in 2011 and featured in the Commission on Dignity in Care for Older People report Delivering Dignity in 2012.
What lessons can be learned from this pioneering work, and how can we instigate similar transformations across health and social services that will benefit the care experience of older people?

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As Clinical Vice President at the Royal College of Physicians, Linda leads the work of the clinical standards department. This includes national clinical audits, quality improvement projects and development of clinical guidelines. She is developing the quality strategy for the RCP and also leads on revalidation for physicians.
Linda is a consultant physician in general and geriatric medicine, and in April 2008 moved to an innovative post with the East Lancashire Primary Care Trust, working to develop care 'closer to home'.
She has been a senior independent complaints reviewer for the Health Service Ombudsman and is currently a non-executive director of the National Patient Safety Agency. She was elected to the council of the RCP in 2008 and as clinical vice president in June 2010.
Linda has lectured widely, both nationally and internationally, on quality and safety in healthcare. In 2000, she was appointed OBE for her services to medical management.

Presentation: Meeting the clinical needs of later life: The role of technology and innovation

Health problems such as Alzheimer's and dementia, Parkinson's disease, osteoporosis, hearing loss, eye disease, heart disease, cancer and diabetes are all prevalent conditions in ageing populations. Though it is a testament to our modern healthcare system that life expectancy is increasing, this has made the clinical concerns of older people a much more pressing concern, and the need to develop new and innovative practices within healthcare to accommodate this a necessity.
How can innovation and new technologies help us to ensure that the health needs of the elderly are at the forefront of medical practice? How can they assist us in forming successful prevention and early intervention programmes to minimise the prevalence of degenerative disease for the next generation of elderly service users? How can they help to prevent hospital admissions and support elderly service users to live safely and confidently in their own homes?

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Martin Knapp is an experienced researcher working in health and social care policy and practice, with a particular focus on economic issues. He works at both the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and King's College London (KCL). At LSE, Martin is Professor of Social Policy and directs the Personal Social Services Research Unit (since 1996) and is also co-Director of LSE Health and Social Care (since 2000). At KCL, he is Professor of Health Economics, based in the Centre for the Economics of Mental and Physical Health, which he established in 1993.

Martin was appointed inaugural Director of the School for Social Care Research by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) in England in 2009, and continues in that role.


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David Orr is Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation and a former President of CECODHAS-Housing Europe, the European Liaison Committee for Social Housing. He has chaired the mobility taskforce, which recently reported on how to increase social housing mobility. He also sits on the board of The Housing Finance Corporation (THFC). He was a member of the Social Investment Task Force, which supports the development of social investment in the UK, and is one of the Founding Directors of My Home Finance, a social enterprise set up by the federation to provide a new high street service offering affordable loans, money advice, bank accounts and linked savings accounts.

Previously, David has been Chief Executive of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and of Newlon Housing Trust, having also worked with Centrepoint. David was awarded in 2010 an honorary membership of the CIH.



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Ellen is chair of the Lambeth Pensioners' Action Group (LAMPAG), executive member of the National Pensioners Convension and a committee member of LOPSG.
She is committed to the aim of making London fully inclusive by ensuring the needs and aspirations of all older people are integral to the planning of services and by breaking down prejudices and discrimination that can reduce dignity in later years. Ellen is currently working to take forward LOPSG's work programme on equalities issues.


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Wendy Tindale has played a central role within the South Yorkshire health service for over 25 years, working extensively to turn medical and technological innovations into frontline patient care. In that time Wendy has facilitated clinician-led working relationships between technology users, healthcare professionals, academia and industry in order to discover, design, develop and disseminate new technology. This has taken in major industry initiatives including the Virtual Physiological Human project as well as the NIHR funded Devices for Dignity (D4D).

As the key interface in the Virtual Physiological Human project, her team has created a groundbreaking computational modelling initiative that generates 'personal avatars' of patients. This project gives medical professionals the ability to simulate treatments and surgery in order to decide on the best approach.

In her role as the Clinical Director of D4D, she leads this national organisation, taking clinical ideas from concept through to commercialisation as rapidly as possibly to help patients with debilitating conditions deal with their daily challenges.




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Julie Harries has been in NHS management for 28 years after graduating with a degree in Physical Geography from Swansea University.

Julie has worked with NHS Improvement since it began in 2008, and also its predecessors, the Coronary Heart Disease Collaborative and Heart Improvement Programme, since October 2000 (as part of the NHS Modernisation Agency). Before that most of her career was in operational management, holding a number of senior posts in community, mental health and acute NHS trusts.

Julie is currently a Director with the NHS Improvement and leads the Heart Team – working on improving cardiac services across England.

She has a wide range of experience and expertise gained over 12 years' work in quality and service improvement on a variety of national initiatives and projects including leading work on service redesign and developing clinical pathways, establishing clinical networks, and work in primary care and acute hospitals.



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