Abstract
As the British population ages, along with those of other advanced economic societies, there will be a greater need for health and social care for this group. Successive British governments have to some extent failed to tackle this demographic issue. All health and social care professions will have to devote more of their staffing resources to working with older adults and social work is no exception. A recent research study (Carson et al., 2020), looked at how British people in the North and the South of England (n = 1608), were functioning in the week of the first COVID-19 lockdown in England. While originally planned as a study of happiness, it was obvious that participants were very worried about the growing threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper we compare the findings from a group of Older participants (aged 60 to 87, n = 104), with a Younger cohort (aged 17 to 30, n = 673), on a range of measures. Older participants were seen to have significantly higher levels of Flourishing on three subscales from the PERMA Profiler. They had higher levels of Meaning and Personal Accomplishments, and lower levels of Negative Emotions. They were also found to have lower levels of Loneliness and less psychological distress. Age may have been an advantage going into the COVID-19 lockdown. We report on these findings and outline a new study of Older adults which aims to compare a large British and a Taiwanese sample. Do people in Britain have higher levels of Flourishing and less psychological distress than their Taiwanese counterparts? We also intend to look at the concept of anti-mattering. Do Older people in the UK feel they are listened to more and that their views matter to others more than their Taiwanese equivalents?