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Travel and mobility for older people has typically focussed on the practical benefits to the individual, for example, in meeting utilitarian needs of shopping, appointments and staying connected to family and friends. However, previous research has hinted that travel for its own sake, to get out and about and feel and experience mobility, may be just as important for older people and is especially missed when individuals give-up driving. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper examines travel for its own sake, usually referred to as discretionary travel, interviewing 20 older people in each of three different contexts: for drivers, for community transport users and for non-drivers who receive lifts from family and friends.

Older people not only enjoy discretionary travel, but also feel it is beneficial to their health and wellbeing. The car and especially driving, is seen as the best way to fulfil discretionary travel. Community transport users do fulfil discretionary travel needs but these are over formalised and lack spontaneity affecting feelings of control and identity. Receiving lifts from family and friends can often result in older people feeling a burden to the providers of the lifts especially when travel is viewed as discretionary.

More needs to be done to ensure discretionary travel needs are met for those without cars, highlighting the importance of such travel to community transport providers and helping reduce the feeling of being a burden to family and friends.

Policy, practice and research has tended to focus on transport as a means to an end. However, older people themselves value mobility just as much for its own sake and just to view nature. Such discretionary reasons for mobility are actually very important for health and wellbeing of older people and need more attention.

In this article we consider community well‐being and new approaches to reinvigorating partnership working for older people's services. In particular, we focus on improving transport for older people. We draw on findings from a series of public consultations, group discussions and interviews with older people in 10 purposively selected localities in England. Although there was great diversity in the issues raised by older people on the subject of transport, both across and between the sites, we point to a number of core analytical themes which could assist commissioners in developing a citizens' framework designed to address this traditionally ‘wicked’ issue.

Older people are reported to be the largest group to suffer from mobility deprivation. This paper reviews the literature relating to the mobility of older people in the context of transport opportunities and provision. The findings show that older people regard car ownership as an aid to independence and mobility. Car ownership is considered the norm and a necessity in rural areas. However within Wales, older people are more likely to be on a low income and live in a rural area, and are less likely to have a car than the rest of the population. Mobility, hearing and visual problems have a higher prevalence in the older population, rendering the use of public transport problematic. Difficulties include problems with getting on and off buses, difficulties with reading passenger information, missing information and communicating with service personnel. Improved access to public transport for older and disabled people can make a major contribution to the financial and social independence of this large and growing sector of the population (TRL Project Report, 1994) and will further promote the social inclusion of older people into society.

A study of the main parameters to be resolved for civil V/S.T.O.L. aircraft, the necessity for all weather operation, the airport requirements and the competition from other forms of transport. FROM a choice of a wide range of V/S.T.O.L. applications, this paper is concerned with the civil aircraft aspects. It deals with the main parameters to be studied in resolving V.T.O.L. and S.T.O.L. aircraft characteristics, the weighting of these toward favourable performance and to meeting the proposed certification rules for this form of transport. The part to be played by electronics in all weather operations is also discussed. Competition from surface transport, and V/S.T.O.L. airport requirements are referred to, and some general characteristics of the many different aircraft configurations are discussed. Some conclusions are reached suggesting the direction and weighting of future work.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development, implementation and early impact of a national action plan for active and healthy ageing in Scotland.

The Joint Improvement Team, NHS Health Scotland, the Scottish Government and the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (ALLIANCE) co-produced the action plan with older people from the Scottish Older People’s Assembly. Together they supported partnerships to embed the action plan as an important element of the reshaping care for older people transformation programme in Scotland.

A cross-sector improvement network supported health, housing and care partnerships to use a £300 million Change Fund to implement evidence based preventative approaches to enable older people to live well. Older people in Scotland spent over two million days at home than would have been expected based on previous balance of care and impact of ageing.

Improving the health and wellbeing of older people is not just the responsibility of health and social care services. Enabling older people to live independent, active and fulfilling lives requires coordinated effort that spans national and local government policy areas, mobilises all sectors of society, and involves all health and care disciplines. Success starts with listening to what matters to older people, and working together, and with older people and local communities, to make that a reality.

This case study from Scotland offers transferable learning for other systems who have an ageing population and an ambitions to enable them to live well in later life.

Although the value of community capacity building is widely accepted within scholarly literature, these initiatives thus far appear to have achieved very little impact in the achievement of community development aspirations. This paper aims to increase knowledge regarding specific priority areas which when targeted will result in more effective pathways towards sustainable development.

This study was performed through utilization of a qualitative strategy, which involved the combination of a number of qualitative methods and techniques including individual interviews, surveys, focus groups, literary review and policy analysis.

The investigation found that improving identified CSD priority areas, aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDGs), seems to be the most effective strategy to enhance the ability of local communities to overcome sustainability challenges over time. SDGs 9, 4, 15, 16, 17 and 8 were identified as the areas of greatest significance for practical community capacity building for sustainable development (CSD).

This paper answers scholarly literature’s call for greater investigation into bringing sustainability research closer to society, to clearly define research direction and agenda. It also recommends ways to action the global goals locally.

This paper aims to estimate the determinants of the intensity of use of financial inclusion by households in Ghana.

Due to the reality of a household using one or more financial products or services, this study uses the generalised Poisson model applied to GLSS6 and GLSS7 data collected in 2012/2013 and 2016/2017 respectively, to estimate the determinants of the intensity of use of financial inclusion. To deepen the analysis, a multinomial probit model is also applied.

Results show that infrastructural variables such as roads, public transport and banks stimulate the intensity of financial inclusion. In addition, agricultural development characteristics such as markets and cooperatives are essential for the intensity of inclusion.

There is a need to incorporate how many services or depth of services that people use as part of the conceptualisation of financial inclusion, as this can provide more policy-relevant evidence to enhance priority setting in financial inclusion policies. Also, micro-level financial inclusion studies in agrarian economies should consider exploring agricultural development and infrastructure variables in the modelling framework. As lead to further studies, count models of financial inclusion should consider exploring cross-country analysis, the use of panel data, or other methodological approaches to provide more robust evidence.

Previous studies have not modelled financial inclusion based on a count model as a means of measuring intensity though conceptualisations highlight the fact that people use varied financial products or services. Following from this angle, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides the first attempt at analysing the underlying determinants of the number of financial products or services used by households.

The ten‐step APELL process, as set out in the APELL Handbook, is described, together with the roles of the APELL partners and ways of starting APELL. An account of UNEP’s APELL programme is given. The progress of APELL throughout the world is discussed and a view is offered about how the pro‐gramme can be further implemented and made more effective.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the benefits of a social prescribing service for older people with sensory impairments experiencing social isolation. The paper draws on the findings from a 12-week programme run by Sense, a voluntary sector organisation, and illustrates how integrated services, combining arts-based participation and voluntary sector support, can create positive health and wellbeing outcomes for older people.

The research took a mixed-methodological approach, conducting and analysing data from interviews and dynamic observation proformas with facilitators and quantitative psychological wellbeing scores with participants throughout the course of the programme. Observations and case study data were also collected to complement and contextualise the data sets.

The research found that participatory arts programmes can help combat social isolation amongst older people with sensory impairments and can offer an important alliance for social care providers who are required to reach more people under increasing pecuniary pressures. The research also highlights other benefits for health and wellbeing in the group including increased self-confidence, new friendships, increased mental wellbeing and reduced social isolation.

The research was based on a sample size of 12 people with sensory impairments and therefore may lack generalisability. However, similar outcomes for people engaging in participatory arts through social prescription are documented elsewhere in the literature.

The paper includes implications for existing health and social care services and argues that delivering more integrated services that combine health and social care pathways with arts provision have the potential to create social and medical health benefits without being care/support resource heavy.

This paper fulfils a need to understand and develop services that are beneficial to older people who become sensory impaired in later life. This cohort is growing and, at present, there are very few services for this community at high risk of social isolation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the connections between financial inclusion and agricultural commercialization among farmers in Ghana.

In order to address endogeneity and sample selectivity bias, the study employs endogenous switching regressions (ESRs) to examine whether financially included and financially excluded maize farm households differ in their commercialization behavior and whether financial inclusion affects commercialization. The Heckman Treatment Effect (HTE) model is used to test for robustness of the results. The data used contain a random sample of 2,230 maize farmers across the ten regions of Ghana.

The results from the ESRs show that financial inclusion significantly fosters agricultural commercialization. Specifically, financially included households sell 13.25 percent more output than their financially excluded counterparts. In terms of the counterfactual, financially excluded households would have sold 5.04 percent more output if they were to have access to financial services. Results from the HTE model confirm that financial inclusion promotes agricultural commercialization.

Financial inclusion is low among maize farmers; this implies that there are more benefits to be gained by ensuring that farmers have access to a broad range of financial services.

The findings imply that the quest for the integration of smallholder farmers into markets cannot overlook measures to ensure financial inclusion.

It represents the first attempt at linking financial inclusion to agricultural commercialization using econometric methodology. The study serves as a foundation paper and for that matter will serve as a guide to future research on the financial inclusion-agricultural commercialization nexus.