**5. Continuation**

rehabilitation policy, a user-friendly questionnaire to detect vulnerable elderly people and 10 days of training for district nurses. For the purpose of allowing greater freedom for elderly people, elderly associations have developed a form which elderly patients can use to request a geriatric assessment upon admission to hospital and medical information at discharge.

During 'Ageing Better Workshops', elderly people offered their evaluation of the project from the perspective of an elderly person. This has led to changes in the available information for elderly people and their caregivers to use before hospitalization, whenever possible.

From the outset of the programme, the ZonMw committee worked to ensure that elderly people were not only the object of inquiry and research in the programme but were also included as subjects and participants. The elderly people were encouraged to participate in the geriatric networks and in working groups. As a result, the focus of empirical research on medical care innovation shifted over time, based partly on what elderly people themselves considered being important. This in turn led to an increasing emphasis on welfare and sup-

Initially, elderly people had to become accustomed to participating in a professional setting. Collaboration between volunteers (the elderly people) and professionals cannot be taken for granted and requires commitment from everyone involved. Elderly people were trained to discuss project proposals, procedures and outcomes with professionals. Frail elderly people were not involved in these procedures. However, as the active elderly people had regular contact with the frail elderly people, the voices of the frail elderly people could be included in the working groups. Embedding elderly people in the organisation of the networks and involving them in projects and research meant that all networks had a strong core group of active elderly people. The project outputs were better suited to elderly people's needs because elderly participants were included in target group panels and advisory boards. For example, participants proposed improved integration of medical care and

A new phenomenon is the involvement of elderly people in education, not just occasionally but as a structural part of the curriculum. This occurs especially where colleges and universities train students to work as professionals—nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, and psychologists, for example—with elderly people. Elderly people participate as teachers in various roles, for example, as patient, guest lecturer, mentor or co-supervisor of theses. They also participate in research, in focus groups and in training groups. The combination of elderly and young people has proved to be valuable to everyone concerned. Elderly people have also been asked to participate in technical and vocational training programmes. The Organization of Elderly (*DenkTank 60+ Noord* in Dutch) has five research and development education groups.

Suggestions were also made to pay greater attention to welfare aspects.

port of the elderly in the continuum of well-being and care.

**4. Participation of the elderly**

106 Gerontology

welfare and more preventive activities.

The demand for elderly is now greater than the offer.

The Dutch National Care for the Elderly Programme, which began as a research project, has since become a movement. The results will be implemented further by the consortium Ageing Better (BeterOud in Dutch), a cooperation of 11 organisations including knowledge institutes for long-term care and welfare, elderly associations, regional support networks and housing corporations [3]. The movement's many ambassadors work to advocate the message that old age is a new phase, the logical continuation of your life, in which you still manage your own life and in which you still play the main role. Ageing Better aims to support and inspire everyone, in person and online, so that we can succeed to assign value to this new phase.

In 2015, Deltaplan Dementia was launched by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), a large national programme for fundamental research on dementia and a programme of initiatives to improve care for patients suffering from dementia.

In 2018 a new programme on long-term care for frail elderly people and people with physical and mental disabilities will be launched by ZonMw, a programme for the next 4 years.

The Dutch College of General Practitioners has renewed their Vision on General Practice Care for the elderly and developed a National Primary Care Agreement for communication between different care providers and a handbook for elderly care.

A national guideline for person-centred and integrated care for elderly patients will be developed in the coming years.

The Advisory Board for Health and Welfare of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport has recommended introducing a personal care plan to be used for all elderly patients to help them cope with their multiple problems.

The Dutch government will set aside EUR 435 million in 2018 for the nursing homes and suggests that in the long term, some 2.1 billion euros can be added to the nursing homes per year. The extra money is intended to improve the quality of nursing home care by appointing more well-trained staff. For district nursing, ambulance care, intensive care and emergency services, the government is putting additional effort into making available 350 million euros for the period from 2017 to 2022.
