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seven - Ageing in place: creativity and resilience in neighbourhoods
- Edited by Anna Goulding, Newcastle University, Bruce Davenport, Newcastle University, Andrew Newman, Newcastle University
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- Book:
- Resilience and Ageing
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 19 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2018, pp 157-180
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- Chapter
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Summary
Editorial introduction
In common with the first two chapters of this book, this chapter takes a creative, participatory approach to exploring older people's experiences of resilience in their neighbourhoods. In this case, the authors used a ‘World Café’ approach to eliciting responses and generating consensus and, at the same time, used creative methods both to support participation and to communicate the findings to a wider audience. As such, this chapter has much in common with Chapters Five and Six, in so far as the researchers are explicitly concerned with helping participants to become aware of the resources they have to support resilience (which is seen as social) and to become engaged in wider social and political processes that impact on their resilience.
Introduction
How do we age in place? How, in the UK, do we grow older in our communities and find support in these times of austerity? The UK central government presents the hollowing out of the state as an inevitable consequence of globally created and nationally experienced austerity (Phillipson, 2012). The impact, however, is that the risk of exclusion arising from public sector withdrawal is disproportionately weighted towards groups who are vulnerable through individual or social and community factors. As we detail in the next section, support for adult care is now severely reduced, while neighbourhood institutions of community centres and libraries providing structured activity have also been thinned. Between 2010 and spring 2016 an estimated 343 libraries have been closed, including 132 mobile services targeted at housebound readers (Woodhouse and Dempsey, 2016). Two thousand bus routes were altered or withdrawn between 2010 and 2015 (Campaign for Better Transport, 2015); while 2,500 bank branch closures are expected by 2018 (Edwards, 2015). These lead to a loss of local services and, importantly, a loss of meeting places for social interaction.
This chapter reports on the findings of an arts-based participatory consultation with older people living in the English north-east city of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 2014–15 and over a period of eight months we shared conversations about what people do to support themselves and others and what else they need to enjoy a ‘good later life’, living at home, being part of a place and neighbourhood.
Older adults, falls and technologies for independent living: a life space approach
- CATHY BAILEY, TIMOTHY G. FORAN, CLIODHNA NI SCANAILL, BEN DROMEY
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- Journal:
- Ageing & Society / Volume 31 / Issue 5 / July 2011
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 16 May 2011, pp. 829-848
- Print publication:
- July 2011
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- Article
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This paper draws attention to the need for further understanding of the fine details of routine and taken-for-granted daily activities and mobility. It argues that such understanding is critical if technologies designed to mitigate the negative impacts of falls and fear-of-falling are to provide unobtrusive support for independent living. The reported research was part of a large, multidisciplinary, multi-site research programme into responses to population ageing in Ireland, Technologies for Independent Living (TRIL). A small, exploratory, qualitative life-space diary study was conducted. Working with eight community-dwelling older adults with different experiences of falls or of fear-of-falls, data were collected through weekly life-space diaries, daily-activity logs, two-dimensional house plans and a pedometer. For some participants, self-recording of their daily activities and movements revealed routine, potentially risky behaviour about which they had been unaware, which may have implications for falls-prevention advice. The findings are presented and discussed around four key themes: ‘being pragmatic’, ‘not just a faller’, ‘heightened awareness and blind spots’ and ‘working with technology’. The findings suggest a need to think creatively about how technological and other solutions best fit with people's everyday challenges and needs and of critical importance, that their installation does not reduce an older adult to ‘just a faller’ or a person with a fear-of-falls.