By 2020 the world's population will include more than 1000 million people aged 60 and older. The goal for nursing care is "to assist older persons in achieving optimal health, well-being, and quality of life, as determined by those receiving care or consistent with the values and known wishes of the individual" (The International Council of Nurses). In response, FoNS and Pfizer Ltd worked in partnership through the "Developing Practice for Healthy Ageing Programme" to help nurses to realise this goal by empowering them to develop and deliver positive practice for healthy ageing.

The programme aimed to support the development of innovative approaches to providing better health care, access and support for people towards the goal of 'Healthy Ageing' in England and Wales. It ran over two years (mid 2004 to mid 2006) and four nurse-led teams were involved (two teams starting in 2004 and two teams starting in 2005), each receiving a grant of £10,000. The practice development facilitators from FoNS (Theresa Shaw and Kate Sanders) and our external advisors Belinda Dewar and Phyllis Runciman provided support and advice.

The innovative projects are all now completed and final reports outlining their achievements can be downloaded from this microsite. Follow the 'project' link on the left side of this page.

An evaluation of the programme has been undertaken by FoNS and a full report is now available to download.

Evaluation of the Developing Practice for Healthy Ageing Programme July 2007 (PDF 2MB)

We hope this website will continue to serve a variety of purposes:

• Enable the sharing of good practice by providing reports on the projects invovled in the programme
• Help nurses and others involved in similar projects to share their work on this website - if you have some information to share please contact us!
• Provide information and links to other useful resources (use the links on the left to navigate)