It sounds nice: an extensive fitness program for the elderly, reimbursed by the municipality. Elderly people who work on their bodies twice a week for fourteen weeks. Who gain strength and self -reliance and can therefore continue to live at home for longer. How important is that, since there are no more care homes?
And then the profit for municipalities: the vitaler elderly can vacuum themselves, zemen windows, walk stairs and do some shopping. To them, municipalities do not have to grant that stairlift or household help for the time being. Because about the latter: because of the staff shortage there is a large shortage of household helpers, while demand for this rises under pressure from the aging population.
Powerful Aging is called the fitness program, developed by HRC Powerful Aging from Lochem. The company is working on the road. In 2019 it concluded a first contract, with Coevorden, and since then 41 municipalities have been spread throughout the Netherlands. Thousands of sixties, seventies and eighties went through the program. And they are so satisfied, says director Jeroen Laarhuis, that 80 percent comes back after the fourteen weeks for the extended program.
It works as follows: an older person comes to the WMO counter of the municipality in the hope of, for example, a household help. The official asks the applicant to determine whether he is eligible for the intake of the fitness program. No acute complaints such as a heart rhythm disorder? No progressive condition such as kidney failure? Didn’t have an operation recently undergone? Then the resident may go to an intake of Powerful Aging with a contracted physiotherapist in the area. In the intake, taken by HRC Powerful Aging itself, the elderly undergo a number of physical tests. They lift weights. They stoop. They are on the floor and stand up.
Dire cases
The Drechtsteden, seven municipalities in the region of Dordrecht, started a Powerful Aging pilot in May last year. About nine hundred people since then asked for WMO help (Social Support Act). Five hundred people went on to the intake of Powerful Aging. One hundred people were considered suitable, almost half of them went through the program so far. They repeatedly stood up from a chair, with or without a weight in the lap. They pressed herself up, everyone at his level, he also counted against a wall. Everything for the benefit of the ‘explosive muscle power’. One Astrid (77) is reaping the benefits, she recently said in the ‘WMO newspaper’ of the Drechtsteden: “I recently almost fell with my groceries about a sidewalk tile, but I could still save myself. Then I thought: hey, that is first!”
In 2024, the Drechtsteden paid 141,000 euros in HRC Powerful Aging and the municipalities saved around “147,000 euros on other WMO deployment,” says a spokesperson. “So the net effect is around 6,000 euros positive.”
But the program also leads to distressing situations, according to inquiries in the Drechtsteden and other municipalities. Willem Revius (71) from Zwijndrecht has a stuck lumbar vertebra after a fall of a ladder six years ago. A year later a car scooped him on the bike, since then his hip hurts. Walking is difficult. But he has to mop, iron, vacuum and do the shopping. His wife (71) is even worse. Her kidneys only work for 7 percent, she has metastatic bowel cancer, is difficult. In October Revius asked the municipality for a household help. Because: “Vacuuming now costs me an hour, I am so slow.” Nevertheless, he was considered suitable for the fitness program. Revius went and asked the municipality a few weeks later: do I still get that household help? That, he heard, depends on the final test after fourteen weeks. So he kept showing up, 28 sessions long. “I thought: if I don’t do it, I don’t get a household help.” Lying and then rising again found Revius the toughest. “And I had to do that four or five times. And once up I had to make a hop.” An old couple also trained, he says. “They dropped out after nine weeks. And a week later another woman stopped. They found it too physically too heavy.” Revius continued. He feels “blackmailed” by the municipality, he says.
“I am on the waiting list for a knee operation. Those complaints do not reduce with Powerful Aging”
Fred Loos, party leader of Coalitiepart National Interest Zwijndrecht, recently received nine complaints from residents, including a woman with a double pelvic break whose man was referred to the intake for Powerful Aging. Who will take care of me in the one and a half to two hours that he is gone, the woman wondered. Earlier this month, the city council called on the motion in an almost unanimously supported motion to stop Powerful Aging in its current form.
Elderly people also feel set in front of the block outside the Drechtsteden. A Zoetermeers couple from far in the eighty abandoned Powerful Aging and eventually arranged a domestic help. The woman no longer has a feeling in her hands and feet and walks with a stick, the man bends difficult and gets injections into his worn knee. “I am on the waiting list for a knee operation. Those complaints do not reduce with Powerful Aging,” the man wrote in a notice of objection to the municipality. Also a couple from Groningen, municipality of Eemsdelta, fished behind the net, RTV Noord wrote last month: She is almost blind, he doesn’t want to leave her home to fitness 28 times. Eemsdelta rejected their request for household help. In the meantime, the municipality has promised to adjust the policy.
Disappointment
Heikel Punt is the duty that the elderly feel to say ‘yes’. In the Drechtsteden it is literally in the policy rules: residents for whom the fitness program is a ‘suitable solution’ according to the municipality, ‘in principle, do not claim domestic help. “People certainly experience it as the only pressure,” says Alderman Van Dordrecht Chris van Benschop (GroenLinks), as chairman of the “Joint Social Drechtsteden Regulation” responsible for the Wmo policy. “I think we should select stricter in advance: is this gentleman or Mrs. really suitable for the intake? Stronger: we have already started with that.” But she also thinks that “the resistance in some people” comes partly from the “big shift” of the municipality. “First, so to speak, you were simply assigned that household help. And that is no longer the case. People have to get used to it, of course.”
Photo Flip Franssen
Director Laarhuis of Powerful Aging also thinks that the complaints arise partly from “disappointment” among people who counted on domestic help.
Under pressure on the shortage of household helpers, not much too rosy look at the potential of seventies, eighties and nineties? No, says Laarhuis. “Because of this supplementary offer, municipalities can see even better if they can help the elderly. Because Suppose you are actually suitable for Powerful Aging, but instead you get a household help. Then people will exercise less and they will not get better physically, but worse.” As a result of political and social dissatisfaction, Drechtsteden will evaluate the policy this month, a year earlier than planned. “It is never the intention to send people with a bad feeling to an intake,” says Alderman Van Benschop. But the concept continues to support them. “You don’t have to throw the child away with the bath water. For many people, the fitness program leads to a huge health gain.”
Willem Revius has since been assigned a stairlift and an electric wheelchair from the municipality so that he no longer has to push his wife. The application for domestic help is – more than five months after the municipality of the municipality – is still being processed.