We are on average living longer. In 2012, the European working age population will begin to shrink, while the over-60 population will continue to increase by at least 2 million a year. Too often discussion about the ageing population takes on an apocalyptic turn. This breeds social pessimism about our ability to act, and individual pessimism about our future and that of our loved ones. This needs to change; meeting the challenge of an ageing population - which will impact on us all in some way - requires us to be creative in our thinking, positive in our approach and realistic about the scale of innovation and change required.

The Young Foundation has worked on ageing for many years; indeed Michael Young pioneered new thinking about active ageing, helping to create many new organisations, from the University of the Third Age to Grandparents Plus. Today the Young Foundation's work encompasses research, the design of new public or community services and the launch of new ventures that can better meet the needs of older people. These include Tyze, a network model facilitating informal and formal care and support; Full of Life, a peer-to-peer community based project to promote emotional resilience skills for older people and Care4Care, a new community focused campaign to get many more volunteers caring for older people that allows them to ‘bank' their hours to draw down when they need care themselves, like a time pension. Other ventures - Neuroresponse and Maslaha - are trailing new models for supporting people with long-term conditions and work with many older people.

The Young Foundation works to address social isolation, resilience and enable the elderly to remain in their own homes through a range of projects; potential solutions lie in diverse fields including how we build homes and communities, develop and use technology and ventures that translate latent community skills into valuable resources.

The challenges presented by an ageing population are shared ones and solutions will come from a wide range of sources. In undertaking our work, the Young Foundation provides opportunities for organisations to share ideas and develop innovative responses together. This has included an event focused on innovation supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Cisco and a virtual discussion as part of our SIX TelePresence series, which enabled organisations from around the world to share ideas and models for progress.

In the coming weeks we will publish a major new report on active ageing by writer and Young Foundation Fellow, Yvonne Roberts. This will argue that current systems - combined with ageist attitudes - hinder the development of an effective agenda to promote active ageing. It calls for a major shift from crisis to prevention, focuses on the skills we need to develop in enabling active ageing and concludes that greater investment is needed in innovation.

One Hundred, Not Out will be published by the Young Foundation this winter. To sign up to receive notification, please email external.affairs@youngfoundation.org

To learn more about our work on Health and Ageing, please e-mail Sylvia Wyatt on sylvia.wyatt@youngfoundation.org