No, this is not a celebration of Bruce Forsyth’s 80th birthday, but recognition that doing justice to opposite ends of the age spectrum is a challenge for many organisations.

The coincidence of our programme planning in the Institute this spring has resulted in a Seminar/Workshop in Cardiff on consultation with children and young people, followed by another in Glasgow a week later on consulting the older generations. It gave us an opportunity to review current best practice in both areas and to seek to draw conclusions from them.

Here are five things they both have in common:-
• Both – for different reasons – are the focus of comprehensive public service re-engineering, with varying degrees of commitment towards involving those who will use such services