Retirement Transition Initiative
For the individual, retirement – like many other life transitions – can be a challenging time, involving difficult lifestyle changes and choices. This is often compounded by other transitions such as starting to care for grandchildren, relocation, illness, and bereavement. As the ageing population is growing at a faster speed than the workforce, and our attitudes to employment and ‘old age’ are shifting, the way we view and prepare for retirement as a society also has to shift.
The Shaftesbury Partnership has been at the heart of these discussions over the past few years. In 2012, Lord Wei of Shoreditch launched the report ‘Next Steps: life transitions and retirement in the 21st century’. In this report he called for a National Retirement Service to fill the gap in services for this particular life transition. We followed up on this research in 2014 with dedicated focus groups and a prototype (pre-pilot) programme in Stoke-on-Trent. In 2015, we ran a large scale multi-pilot programme for 200 participants through local delivery partners in Coventry, Wigan and Southampton.
Our pilot was jointly funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Jaguar Land Rover PLC
How it works
The Retirement Transition Initiative (RTI) equips people with the information, networks, resilience, and opportunities they need in order to enter retirement with confidence and continue purposeful activity post-retirement. It aims to improve the health, wellbeing and economic outcomes of the individual, their employer and their community.
RTI is a holistic programme, providing a comprehensive overview of retirement over a one-day or two-day period to approximately 30 participants. It is designed as a household intervention, delivered wherever possible to couples rather than individuals. It consists of information sessions, peer-learning activities, socialising opportunities and workshops on a wide range of subjects which are designed to help people prepare for later life, including:
- post-retirement work, self-employment and volunteering
- financial planning and pensions
- lifelong learning
- housing
- relationships and wellbeing
- health and fitness
RTI’s impact
An independent evaluation of the pilot has been commissioned to measure the impact of the programme, to identify policy implications, and to assist in the design of a larger rollout of RTI.
For a copy of the full report please email info@shaftesburypartnership.org
How to get involved
RTI is a unique opportunity to address one of the key social concerns of our generation in an innovative and practical way, whilst having a real impact on the wellbeing of your employees and the productivity of your workforce. Building on the success of our relationship with Jaguar Land Rover, we are looking for 8-10 employers to help us take the programme to scale.
To find out more or to discuss partnership opportunities, please contact Patrick Shine at patrick.shine@shaftesburypartnership.org