EveryAGE Counts is campaigning for a world without ageism, where all people are valued, respected or connected regardless of age or functional ability.
Care Forward has taken the EveryAGE Counts pledge, and we are encouraging you to take it too!
“I stand for a world without ageism where all people of all ages are valued and respected and their contributions are acknowledged. I commit to speak out and take action to ensure older people can participate on equal terms with others in all aspects of life."
EveryAGE Counts recently released a Position Statement on Ageism in the time of COVID-19, outlining seven (7) elements to their position, including how important language is. You can read them all here: https://www.everyagecounts.org.au/ageism_in_the_time_of_covid_19
“In the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen the surfacing of some deep-seated ageist attitudes toward older people on a number of fronts that need to be acknowledged and addressed.
The heightened susceptibility of older people to the virus and specific advice that they self-isolate is sometimes seeing older people blamed for the community-wide restrictions. The highlighting of age in the reporting on deaths from the virus reinforces an underlying view that younger people are not really at risk and the ‘problem’ is therefore less serious. Language used by the media and spokespeople describing a cohort of people spanning up to four decades of life as ‘the elderly’, entrenches a stereotype that all older people are more or less the same as each other.
In other commentary, older people are being called on to take a disproportionate impact of the economic fallout of the pandemic. At its worst, we are seeing discussions about the possibility of age-based rationing of limited healthcare treatments.
Too often, there is the implication that older people’s lives are more expendable than other members of the community, their contributions less valuable, their deaths less tragic.”
We encourage everyone to make the pledge. You can do it here, https://www.everyagecounts.org.au/take_the_pledge, and help end ageism.