Welcome to L4A

Learning for the Fourth Age (L4A) aims to provide educational and learning services to frail elderly people who live in residential accommodation settings.

Research shows that learning in the later stages of life can boost confidence, give residents a more positive outlook on life and delay on the onset of dementia. L4A believes that there is a gap in provision of educational and learning services to people who live in care homes and seeks to address this gap.

L4A intends to:

• Encourage older people to follow up existing interests or develop new ones, using a multimedia range of resources
• Support learners with their individual needs by a trained learning mentor working with them on a one-to-one basis, using appropriate resources for each learner and taking into account their physical needs
• Promote the value of education as a tool for increasing wellbeing, giving a more positive outlook on life, increasing confidence and delaying the onset of dementia.
• Work towards raising the expectations that residents, relatives and society have for the quality of life and mental stimulus for the elderly, especially for those in care.

A long-term goal of L4A is to encourage Care Quality Commission (CQC) to strengthen the standards for social care inspection to include effective mental simulation as a threshold requirement and one-to-one learning, complemented by group learning as the norm.