Old age starts at the age of 50, under government plans set out yesterday for Scots to make their grey years more colourful and fulfilling.

The strategy to help Scotland plan for the effects of the population becoming older is being backed by £27m, nearly half of that to combat fuel poverty, and £10m of it for grants to help people adapt their homes to ensure they can stay in them later in life as they become less mobile.

The Scottish Executive is to spend £750,000 for a campaign to combat ageism and promote more positive images of older people, aimed at the same sort of shift in perceptions that was brought about on drink driving.

Publicising the new 20-year strategy at a school in her Midlothian constituency, Communities Minister Rhona Brankin announced there is also to be a centre set up to promote links between older and younger generations.

The Scottish Centre for Intergenerational Practice will have a budget of £200,000 in its first year.

There is also to be a National Forum on Ageing, backed with £100,000.

Enterprise companies are being told to boost their efforts to get older people involved in setting up companies, particularly to market products and services of use to their generation.

Schools are being encouraged to make more use of older volunteers to boost young people's learning and schools' ethos. A review of funding support for part-time students is to take older people's needs into account.

The strategy defines old age as starting at 50 because it is claimed that is when many life changes start. People begin to leave the workforce, children are leaving home, elderly parents have to be cared for, and some start to suffer from chronic health problems such as diabetes and arthritis. However, the executive is at pains not to bracket all people over 50 as having the same needs, interests and abilities.

After an extensive public consultation, the aim is to turn around the perception that the boom in the elderly population is a problem - the same conclusion reached in a major report on ageing published in January by the Scottish Parliament's Futures Forum, led by Lord Sutherland of Houndwood. "Too often, population ageing has been seen in negative terms, with the emphasis on an increasing burden on health and social care services, rather than on the value that older people bring," says yesterday's report.

Ms Brankin explained: "This is not about making people work until they drop. This is about identifying and removing the barriers that prevent people doing what they want as they get older, whether that is paid work, volunteering, or pursuing other opportunities to enrich their lives and communities."

The strategy was welcomed by Age Concern chief executive David Manion, who said it was "a forward-looking, radical and comprehensive new look at changing how we view old age and the challenge of an older population profile".

Irene Sweeney of the Scottish Pensioners' Forum, praised the role older people had played in developing the strategy. "It is what people want - not what society thinks we want," she said.

The statistics behind the new approach include a rapid rise in people reaching retirement age, partly as baby boomers born between 1945 and 1964 reach their 60s, and partly because life expectancy has been increasing.

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