What are we doing to promote healthy ageing in Torbay?
Active Lives Torbay
Live Longer Better aims to:
– Increase healthspan and prolong independence.
– Improve physical, mental, cognitive and social wellbeing.
– Help people feel and function better. Delay or prevent frailty, dementia and disability.
– Address the negative perceptions of ageing.
– Reduce our need for health and social care by increasing strength, balance and functional ability.
Live Longer Better Highlights
‘Now I feel more positive, confident and motivated to make my health and wellbeing my priority. I challenge myself to converse more at groups and activities I attend. And I also speak to people about the courses and advocate for everyone to do it! The earlier the better.’
‘By the end of the course I felt a lot more positive and optimistic about my future and a lot less fearful about ageing. I had also made some good social connections and I am now feeling a lot less lonely.’
‘When I started the course I also started back on my bicycle – first of all just a 10 min wobble around the block but now I am averaging 2 km each day now, most days of the week!’
Torbay and South Devon Healthy Ageing Partnership
This brings together NHS partners, local authorities, citizen and community organisations to improve how all partners work together to promote and enable healthy ageing.
The partnership has identified two priorities or the coming year:
– falls prevention and
– putting the citizen at the heart of all our health and care.
The benefits of physical activity are truly amazing, at any age.
As we age, the fear of falling becomes a bigger barrier to health, activity and independence. Falls prevention is, and needs to be, a major part of our healthy ageing programmes in Torbay. As individuals, the more active we are, the more resilient we will be to the effect of a fall.
Age Friendly Torbay
All of the factors we have looked at in this report are key components of the World Health Organisation Age Friendly Communities.
Torbay Citizens’ Assembly and Torbay Council signed up to the Age Friendly Torbay Charter in 2021
An age-friendly community is a place that enables people to age well and live a good later life. Somewhere that people can stay living in their homes, participate in the activities they value, and contribute to their communities for as long as possible.
Recommendations:
Promote physical, mental, social and cognitive health through Torbay healthy ageing programmes
Promote enabling health and care through the South Devon and Torbay Healthy Ageing Partnership, in collaboration with Torbay Citizens’ Assembly
[17] National Institute on Aging (2025) Infographic: Mental Health Benefits of Exercise and Physical Activity [online]. Available at: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/mental-and-emotional-health/mental-health-benefits-exercise-and-physical-activity
