Age-friendly communities - the role of local government
Having spent the past 12 to 18 months working on a number of projects within the aged care sector, the concept of creating ‘age-friendly communities’ has been regularly raised by many consumers and stakeholders that we have had the privilege of talking to.
Although the nature of our previous engagements has been primarily health-related, we have become ever more curious about the role of local government in achieving communities that are truly ‘age-friendly’. We acknowledge that by working within the health paradigm alone, you can only get so far in delivering broad health and social outcomes for the community.
Establishing age-friendly communities which are good for all residents across the lifespan, puts local government at the forefront of being able to design and deliver services that allow residents to participate at their level of choosing within the community.
We think that the age-friendly community movement has a lot of promise as a concept and also that our skills in planning and evaluation could be used to support more local governments to develop and execute an age-friendly communities action plan.
What is an age-friendly community?
Queensland: an age-friendly toolkit, states that “An age-friendly community is one that enables people of all ages to actively participate in community life by ensuring older people are free from age-related barriers that prevent participation and engagement”.
Further, it adopts the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) age-friendly approach, which outlines eight key domains of action for any community to be considered ‘age-friendly’. The eight domains are:
Outdoor spaces and buildings: Seniors live in an environment that includes open spaces, buildings, shaded areas and walkways that are safe and easy to navigate.
Transport: Seniors can get out and about using a range of affordable, user-friendly transport and associated services.
Housing: Seniors’ housing options are affordable, accessible and close to transport and community services.
Social participation: Seniors are supported to be active in their community doing the things they enjoy.
Respect and social inclusion: Seniors from all backgrounds are valued and appreciated and no one is excluded based on race, geography, culture, language, gender, sexuality, ability or socioeconomic status.
Civic participation and employment: Seniors participate in employment, training, lifelong learning and volunteering opportunities and inform government policies.
Communication and information: Seniors access information they need in a variety of formats to stay informed and connected with their communities, families and friends.
Community support and health services: Seniors are helped to stay healthy, active and independent through community support and health services, including services responding to elder abuse, fraud or exploitation.
How to become an age-friendly community
Although the Queensland: an age-friendly toolkit offers a number of helpful pointers and checklists for local governments to consider on their journey to becoming ‘age-friendly’, the South Australian Age-Friendly Neighbourhoods: Toolkit for Local Government does a great job of outlining a series of practical steps for local government to get up and running.
Step one: develop population profile
Creating a population profile for older adults within your local government area will make conversations with your local stakeholders much easier to have. Although not a perfect science (population data has many caveats) you will begin to develop a common understanding of the scale and breadth of issues encouraged by older adults in your local government area.
Having led the development of many community needs assessments’ (and a number of aged care specific ones), we fully understand the value of getting step one right.
Step two: identify stakeholders and how you will engage them
Planning for stakeholder engagement is critical to ensuring that you reach the right people, using the right channel/s. From a local government perspective and for the purpose of progressing discussion about developing an age-friendly community, it is critical to engage elected members, council staff, project partners, key stakeholders and the community.
As a team, stakeholder engagement is one of our core service offerings and we echo the importance of effective planning to get in front of the right people in a timely fashion so that subsequent project elements are delivered in line with community needs.
Step three: undertaking the assessment
Step three commences with a series of internal local government workshops, including responding to the criteria outlined in the toolkit, including planning to support positive ageing, housing and services, physical environment, health and wellbeing and participation. The goal of step three is for your local government to reach an agreement on how ‘age-friendly’ you really are (sense-checked with elected members, key stakeholders and community) prior to developing and endorsing an age-friendly action plan with measurable outcomes and a clear monitoring and reporting framework.
Our approach and experience
All of our aged care needs assessment and strategy development work is guided by a blend of internal and external engagement to iterate regional strategies and implementation plans. We believe that what we have learnt in the aged care sector from a health perspective would be of great value to the local government setting (... and we dare say there would be an overlap).
We’d love to hear from any of our colleagues that are working on age-friendly community initiatives in their local government area and get a sense of how they are progressing - what has worked, what hasn’t and what does the future hold for the movement?! Reach out to the Beacon Strategies team to have a chat info@beaconstrategies.net.