The Vision Project

Organisations like mine work locally with schools
on projects around, for example, digital inclusion,
but we do still operate a model which puts older
people on the same estate living together and to
some extent expect them to get on, even though
the only thing that they may have in common is
the fact that they’re over 55.
Our youngest resident is 52 and our oldest 107, an
age range equivalent to a 3-year-old and someone
who’s 58. Within that age range there are many
people who are physically fit and strong at 80 and
some who are frail at 65. A particular problem for
some older people, particularly older men, can be
isolation, widely quoted as shortening an older
person’s life as much as smoking 15 cigarettes
a day. As we all know, loneliness and isolation
have become the subject of a national campaign
because they are so important.
But if you look at the model widely referred to as
sheltered or retirement housing, one question is
how much support neighbours give to each other.
This is an area that needs to be examined further:
does physical proximity – living on an estate with
other older people – mean that it’s more likely that
they will socialise and, more importantly, support
each other? We’re living in an environment
where local authorities are having to cut budgets,
and those include support for older people – for
example, day centres facing closure and local
housing support budgets being axed. In practice
this means that housing providers like us need
and want to do more to help the wellbeing of our
residents, but the question is: how?
Intervening directly into someone else’s life can be
seen as paternalistic when the intention is to work
with people to help their wellbeing. In surveys,
residents have been clear with us that they see
our responsibility as maintaining their homes and
helping them to live independently. Where are
the boundaries in intervening? Survey results have
demonstrated that residents can understandably
be resistant to being organised. Many estates have
arrangements where neighbours look out for each
other without any interference from us.
Surveys also tell us that residents want us to get
the basics right before we get involved in other
areas such as wellbeing. Yet as a responsible
specialist social landlord we have a duty to make
sure that our estates are good places to live.
We believe the answer lies in co-producing
solutions with our residents, working with them to
design projects which work locally but also piloting
different approaches so that we can learn from
them and get better. We have to remember that
many of the people moving on to our estates now
are baby boomers, who are used to more choices
than the previous generation and rightly don’t like
being talked down to. Many are perfectly capable
of organising activities on their estate themselves,
but we need to continue to help those that want
help. We also need to be more robust in evaluating
the results of interventions and learn from what
others are doing.
As older people become a larger part of the
general population there are already great
examples we can learn from – but we just need
to make sure that we’re co-creating solutions by
working together and not imposing what we think
is a good idea on people who have a wealth of
life experience and can teach us a thing or two
themselves.
DEVELOPING HEALTH & INDEPENDENCE
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