Best Practice in Developing Age Friendly Communities

 A holistic approach to ageing well requires a focus on well being in its financial, physical, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions. Key international trends in services for older people include:

· with the exception of people who have severe dementia, most people can now be supported at home until the end of their lives

· greater self reliance and choice is being achieved through positive service culture and clever building design  

In 2007, the UK Audit Commission undertook a large scale study of best practice in older peoples’ services in 10 local authorities. They found increased awareness, better engagement and innovation could help many older people without significant expenditure. The best councils adapt mainstream services and work with public and private sector partners to drive improvements. The study identified that there are many older people ready to contribute to community life and that local authorities should mobilise this resource.

 The American AdvantAge Initiative framework helps define an approach to “age-friendly” community by organising interventions into four categories:

·         Addressing Basic Needs.

·         Optimising Health and Wellbeing.

·         Promoting Social and Civic Engagement.

·         Supporting Independence.

The Boulder County Ageing Services Colorado used the AdvantAge framework and combined it with a strong community engagement process to create its strategic vision. This was a community development approach with a strengths based emphasis. Boulder found cultivating strengths increases the likelihood that as people aged they experienced a higher quality of life and fewer problems.

International best practice for older people now identifies that more service interventions should be positioned upstream and enable people to learn about and have time to manage their own conditions. Services should compliment what older people want to continue to do and how they want to continue to live. Services should tap into naturally occurring responses.

 The approach to strengthen naturally occurring responses builds on the theme of supporting older people to build on individual, familial and community strengths and find their own solutions to the problems they face.  International experience demonstrates that older people in communities have strengths that can be developed to lead to better health and lifestyles.  Best practice contains the key elements:

·         It is dynamic and responsive to changing needs

·         Takes a community strengths based approach

·         Acknowledges that older people want to be self reliant wherever possible

·         Engages stakeholders in development and implementation

 There is now a strong compatibility between consumer and government goals in the area of supporting people to age well. Both want to see outcomes which support people to remain as independent as possible, for as long as possible.  Services which deliver these outcomes will tap into strong consumer demand and receive significant levels of government funding and support.