21 February 2008

Age Concern Kingston’s Chief Executive, Shane Brennan, was once again invited to speak this week, at a national forum, about the organisation’s ground-breaking intergenerational work.

Addressing the NCVO Annual Conference yesterday, Shane spoke on the theme of ‘cross-generational social cohesion’.  Shane described ACK’s award-winning mentoring project in Kingston and highlighted the very real benefits this work has for the participants – both the children and the older volunteers.

The conference, whose theme this year was ‘Working with Government: challenges for civil society’, is the most important annual gathering in the third sector calendar, attended by over 600 delegates from a range of voluntary organisations across the country, as well as representatives from local and central government and corporate organisations.  Keynote speakers, Ed Miliband MP and Oliver Letwin MP, charged with producing the manifestos for their respective parties, once again emphasised the importance placed by both Labour and the Conservatives on the key part to be played by the third sector in the transformation of health and social care delivery.

For more information on ACK’s intergenerational work, including a briefing paper submitted to a joint meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Ageing and on Children at the House of Lords in 2006, click here.