S5M-06963 Generations Working Together

The Presiding Officer (Ken Macintosh): Our final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S5M-06963, in the name of Christine Grahame, on Generations Working Together. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament notes the innovative collaboration between Newbyres Village and Newbyres Nursery in Gorebridge, where children visit older residents on a weekly basis; considers that this is to the mutual benefit of the children and the older residents; understands that, on these visits, the children paint with the residents, are told stories, plant sunflowers, are taught nursery rhymes and play hilarious games, which assist hand and eye co-ordination of both young and old; congratulates the charity, Generations Working Together, and Newbyres Village and Newbyres Nursery, on supporting this initiative, and notes the recommendations for similar projects elsewhere in Scotland.

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17:10

Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

I am one of the three people here who have served of the time that God has allocated to us three score years and 10; I am one of the three septuagenarians who are members of this Parliament. I am delighted to see that the minister who will respond to tonight’s debate was half my age three years ago. He is, of course, in statistical terms catching up, with each passing year.

The issue that Christine Grahame brings to Parliament today, which relates to Newbyres Village and Newbyres Nursery, is important not simply to people in Gorebridge but to people right across Scotland. As people get older, it is inevitable that many of their friends will no longer be with them, for a variety of reasons, and it becomes more difficult for them to make new friendships to replace those that no longer exist because of the death of the friends that they had in their youth. Connecting older people to younger people is a brilliant way of maintaining the social skills and the social interactions that might otherwise diminish in older people’s lives.

For my part, I think that talking to older people is an excellent bridge back into the history of our country and communities. I remember having a chat with my sister-in-law’s father-in-law, Bob Munro, who was a wonderful fellow who stopped driving and got his first pair of glasses only when he was 96. He remembered the soldiers coming back from the Boer war in Victorian times. It was fascinating for me to talk to him about that experience as a comparatively young person—even younger than the minister—and it stimulated new thoughts. Whenever we bring the old and the young together, we have the opportunity to do that.

Kids of nursery age have questions that are of breathtaking naivety when they are viewed from the lofty heights of a 70-year-old like myself. “How did you live without television?” “How did you live without a telephone?” “What happened in the world before there were iPads?” Those are excellent questions to which people of a certain age have an interesting and well-developed answer.

Therefore, we are not only, as the motion says, looking at assisting the

“hand and eye co-ordination of both young and old”;

but at the opportunities for mental stimulation that are created by interaction between young and old. As our memories become less certain with age—that does not affect everyone, but it affects a substantial number of people—the parts of our memory that still work well are generally those that are associated with our youth and infancy. Therefore, having kids come and ask, “What was it like when you were my age?” is a terrific way of re-energising the brain cells of older people.

The motion notes

“the recommendations for similar projects elsewhere”.

I hope that we will see this sort of thing in the north-east of Scotland, which I represent, and elsewhere, because it is remarkable how little time and how few people connect us to distant things. My grandfather was three years old when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on 15 April 1865. That is the kind of link that makes history real for us and that stimulates thinking, physical activity and social skills. It is very much to be commended.

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