We do a good job. In a recent study we found that 90 per cent of the older people who use our community services say WRVS makes life better for them.

But over the next few decades there will be big changes in the way we think about and experience old age:

• there will be a lot more older people (the number of people over-65 will increase by 50 per cent from 2009 to 2035, from 10 million to 15 million)
• people will live longer, so more of us will need to the tackle the wide range of health difficulties older people can face
• older people's expectations of life will increase, the new generation of older people will not put up with the barriers and hardships that many older people experience today, and they will expect to live life how they want to.

This means there will be a lot more demand for the sort of support WRVS provides.

But it also means that older people will want more choice and control over the help they receive. They will want easier access to a range of options so they can choose what support they want. Indeed there are many older people right now who want this choice and independence but don't have access to it.

Think of it from your own perspective. How will you want to be treated when you are older? What support and activities would you want to access? Does the support you will be looking for exist today?

There are big implications for WRVS and indeed all organisations that provide support to older people, including public services, other voluntary organisations and private companies.

If we want older people to enjoy a better quality of life, we need to ensure that the services we provide and the way we provide them are what older people want. That will mean changing the way we deliver our current services in response to feedback from the people we support, and developing new ways to support older people's independence and quality of life.

It is very easy for organisations to get stuck in doing things in the way we have always done them. As people's expectations change as time goes on, what was a good and well regarded service five or ten years ago, could very easily be seen as old-fashioned and inflexible to someone looking for support now.

WRVS' trustees didn't want WRVS to get into a situation where we put our head in the sand and the world changed around us, so they decided that we needed a clear long term strategy for the future that would map out exactly how WRVS would make life better for older people over the next ten years and beyond. This strategy started with our vision, purpose and aims.