Community Voices
Community Voices is a space from Islington Healing Network (IHN) for people who live, work or have a connection to Islington to share what matters in everyday life.
We ask questions about health, money, safety and community life, and listen to the experiences and ideas behind the answers. Join in through a poll, an open question or email. You can share a little or a lot, or simply read along.
Your responses help us understand what matters to people and may shape future conversations and IHN community activities. Please share only what you feel comfortable sharing.
Current Conversations
Who Gets to Retire in Good Health?
The conversation around pension age is not only about how long people are living. Health, the kind of work someone has done, income and the circumstances they are ageing in all make a difference.
Should retirement age take more account of health, occupation and how long people have already worked?
Safety From a Woman’s Point of View
Safety can look very different depending on who is being asked.
This conversation looks at women’s experiences of safety in everyday life, what makes somewhere feel unsafe and what women think would actually make a difference.
What does feeling safe look like from a woman’s point of view?
Who Gets to Retire in Good Health?
Retirement is usually talked about in numbers.
What age should someone retire? How long are people living? How many years might someone receive a State Pension?
But there is another side to that conversation.
What condition are people actually reaching retirement in?
Two people can be the same age and have very different experiences of getting there.
Someone who has spent decades doing physically demanding work may experience working into their late sixties very differently from someone whose job has placed fewer demands on their body.
Health can be different. Income can be different. Housing can be different. Caring responsibilities can be different.
Even the possibility of reducing working hours or retiring earlier depends heavily on what someone can afford to do.
So perhaps age alone does not tell us enough.
There is also a difference between living longer and living longer in good health.
That matters when decisions are being made about how long people should be expected to remain in work.
It raises questions that are much bigger than whether a particular retirement age sounds reasonable on paper.
What happens to somebody who is struggling physically several years before they qualify for their State Pension?
What choices exist for people who cannot afford to stop working?
Does the type of work someone has done throughout their life matter?
And should the years someone is expected to continue working take more account of the circumstances in which they have aged?
There probably isn't one answer that works neatly for everybody.
But that is exactly why this feels worth talking about from a community perspective.