7 results
14 - Future Homes: developing new responses through new organisations
- Edited by Mel Steer, Newcastle University, Simin Davoudi, Newcastle University, Mark Shucksmith, Newcastle University, Liz Todd, Newcastle University
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- Book:
- Hope under Neoliberal Austerity
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 26 April 2021, pp 187-202
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter explores the journey of the Future Homes Alliance (FHA), a community interest company in Newcastle, built from a cross-sectoral partnership of university, local authority, industry and third sector groups that developed innovative housing models to respond to social renewal and social justice. From a conversation in 2016, there is now a development proposal that has been submitted to Newcastle City Council for planning approval. The chapter explores three issues:
• How can we draw more unheard voices into housing design?
• How should housing respond to the challenges of ageing and social sustainability?
• How do we build continuous learning loops that allow for organisational growth and project replication?
It concludes by considering what deeper lessons can be drawn from the FHA that can be more widely applied.
The housing policy context
Although the UK discourse is dominated by tenure, in the context of an ageing population, what is most important is the quality of the home and design that is ‘future-proofed’ to meet individual life changes (Habinteg, 2019). Design specifications with greater inclusivity have been established in a variety of developed countries (Habinteg, 2016; CMHC, 2017; Lifemark, 2019; Livable Housing Australia, 2019). These homes are often aimed at people across the life course but designed to be inclusive of people with disabilities and ‘future-proofed’ for easier adaptation as the needs of occupants change. Adaptability is highly correlated with space standards but these have fallen in the UK as central government has shifted the emphasis from mandatory to discretionary standards. The 1961 report of the UK Ministry of Housing and Local Government (1961), Homes for Today and Tomorrow (known as the Parker Morris Report), reflected a high point in thinking, with additional floor space given the highest priority as a long-term investment in the dwelling and the family. These standards were mandatory for social housing but, in practice, their influence extended into the private sector as developers recognised that aspiring families were demanding more from their dwellings. Parker Morris standards were abandoned in the 1980s, leaving the UK, at the time, as the only country in Western Europe with no minimum space standards for housing (Park, 2017).
Current UK government guidance (DCLG, 2015) has introduced optional and discretionary cross-tenure technical standards to address mobility changes.
The mobilities of care in later life: exploring the relationship between caring and mobility in the lives of older people
- Karen Croucher, Rose Gilroy, Mark Bevan, Katia Attuyer
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- Journal:
- Ageing & Society / Volume 41 / Issue 8 / August 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 11 February 2020, pp. 1788-1809
- Print publication:
- August 2021
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There has been a renewed call for a revaluing of informal caring in order to counter the way that caring is undervalued, taken for granted and invisible. Travel is one area where a detailed critique of this issue has emerged with the concept of ‘mobility of care’, however, this concept has only been applied in relation to younger age groups, and our understanding of mobilities of care in later life remains underdeveloped. By ‘mobilities of care’ we mean journeys made for the purpose of giving and receiving informal care and support. This paper draws on the mobility narratives of 99 older people (aged 55 and above) living in three locations in the North of England who participated in a two-year qualitative longitudinal study that explored the inter-play between mobility, wellbeing and life transitions. We focused on the experience of managing life transitions rather than assume that chronology per se determines wellbeing. Narratives of ageing emphasise the importance of getting out and about, and being socially connected active citizens. Our study demonstrates that for many older people getting out and about is not for leisure or utility purposes but to give support and care. As such, these journeys have a particular significance in the lives of older people and in the construction of roles, meaning and identity in later life.
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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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.
Establishing long-term research relationships with older people: exploring care practices in longitudinal studies
- Katia Attuyer, Rose Gilroy, Karen Croucher
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- Journal:
- Ageing & Society / Volume 40 / Issue 5 / May 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 05 December 2018, pp. 1064-1083
- Print publication:
- May 2020
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Drawing on a recently completed longitudinal research project with 96 participants aged 55+, the paper provides insight into the challenges of carrying out ethical practices when engaged in longer-term research relationships with older people. It builds on a body of work that purposely records in detail the ethical dilemmas researchers face, the options available to them and the rationale guiding their reaction. The Co-Motion research, led by the University of York, examined the impact of major later-life transitions on mobility and wellbeing, and was therefore focused on times of change that were, for some participants, accompanied by suffering. Over three years, the project used a range of methods to explore with each individual the dynamic nature of lived experience: change, continuity, endurance, transition and causality. The paper addresses the negotiation of informed consent over the life of long-term research relationships; the ‘care work’ involved; contested understandings of vulnerability; and the need for ongoing ethical reflection. The paper concludes by calling for greater reflexivity and suggests a more participant-focused approach to ethics in the field, demanding both greater self-awareness from researchers and allowing the participants to have greater voice in the research processes.
Eleven - Fair shares for all: the challenge of demographic change
- Edited by Simin Davoudi, Newcastle University, Derek Bell, Newcastle University
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- Book:
- Justice and Fairness in the City
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 01 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2016, pp 213-230
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter focuses on older people's experience of social injustice, discussed here as oppression. We begin with a discussion of how ‘old age’ as a social category is being reconstructed before turning to consider the utility of oppression as a lens to explore the experiences of older people. Using the framework developed by Young (1990) this chapter considers the operation of exploitation, marginalisation, violence, powerlessness and cultural imperialism, drawing on national and local sources of evidence but more significantly on the narratives of older people living mainly in Newcastle. The discussion concludes by considering the work of Newcastle City Council and its partners in striving to make a reality of their age-friendly city commitment. To what extent do these partnership programmes create transformation or the possibility of transformative action?
Rethinking old age
While all socially constructed categories are in flux, the concept of ‘old age’, our understanding of what it is to be an older person, is now being contested and redefined (Hockey et al, 2013). In part, this is due to the greater number and proportion of people over 50 in global populations and the reasonable expectation that more people can anticipate living into their eighth decade or beyond. This in turn leads to a new landscape of later life that emerges as a multigenerational, highly differentiated experience that is impossible to encapsulate in traditional images. This has caused some commentators (for example, Clapham, 2014) to question whether age as a social category has any validity, though it is clearly still in common usage to determine access to a range of services and environments, which in themselves may be constructed in response to particular definitions of older age.
In response to the broad span of later life that might be some 50 years, new subcategories of ‘old age’ have emerged, with the most prevalent being the idea of the baby boomer. Much has been written on this cohort – in particular what might be more correctly termed the ‘first wave’ baby boomers born in the period after the Second World War – that has captured the public imagination with its, supposed, defining characteristics of individual choice making, prosperity, ownership and greater opportunities in the post work phase of life for self-actualisation. It is these characteristics that are associated with the concept of the ‘third age’. Against this background new agendas have emerged.
Why can't more people have a say? Learning to work with older people
- ROSE GILROY
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- Journal:
- Ageing & Society / Volume 23 / Issue 5 / September 2003
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 02 September 2003, pp. 659-674
- Print publication:
- September 2003
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As part of a suite of policy documents on older people's issues, the ‘New Labour’ British government has published a joint housing and health strategy, Quality and Choice for Older People's Housing. In this they attempt to map out the problems facing older people. The strategy also suggests that among the solutions there should be more opportunities for older people to make choices and for their deeper involvement in housing matters. This paper sketches the background to this strategy and reviews the literature to determine whether there is a foundation of dialogue with older people on housing issues. While there have been increasing efforts to build socially inclusive processes, particularly in the major ‘regeneration’ programmes, it is still the case that older people are usually excluded. The core of the paper is a case study from the Better Government for Older People programme which explored the process by which older people worked alongside professionals to remodel a local authority dwelling. An analysis of the dialogue provides a window onto the self conceptions of professionals. Older people gained as individuals and as a group from the housing project, and were able to develop collective influence through a representation role. Learning by the local authority was more incremental. The paper ends with a discussion of the broader lessons for service providers.
eight - The homelessness legislation as a vehicle for marginalisation: making an example out of the paedophile
- Edited by Patricia Kennett, University of Bristol, Alex Marsh, University of Bristol
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- Book:
- Homelessness
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 July 2022
- Print publication:
- 15 September 1999, pp 161-186
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Summary
One of the delegates, a Bakers’ Union shop steward, who had lost his job in one of the big mergers of the local bakeries, got up and said…. “It's the morality of housing that we’re after. Society is a chain, and the strength of a chain is its weakest link, and the wealth of a society is the wealth of its poorest members.”. (Benn, 1990, p 15)
Introduction
Nowhere are the Orwellian characteristics of access laws more apparent than in the formulation and implementation of the homelessness legislation in England and Wales. Even though the UK is in the process of implementing a variant on the European Convention of Human Rights, this will not guarantee a ‘right to housing’. Indeed, talk of ‘rights’ in this context is misconceived because the homelessness legislation has “always required us to oppress the homeless by making moral judgments, not about their housing need, but about why the homeless become homeless in the first place” (Cowan, 1997a, p 21). The homelessness legislation, therefore, provides a shroud which legitimates the exclusion of substantial numbers from housing.
The importance of morality, both within the legislation as well as to its interpretation, should not shock us. The rationale for the harshness of the Poor Law regime(s) was that those who required state support were, in some way, undeserving. Under one version of this legislation, undeservingness was part of the public humiliation of poverty – recipients of Poor Law relief were forced to wear the letter ‘P’ on the right shoulder of their uppermost garment (Cranston, 1985, pp 34-43). With this in mind, it is surely significant that the two defining periods in the making of the modern homelessness legislation – 1976-77 (culminating with the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act) and 1993-96 (1996 Housing Act, Parts VI and VII) – have taken place against a backdrop of a broader societal concern about the relationship between the creation of, and response to, poverty. Parliamentary debates surrounding the 1977 Act must be read in the context of the “extensive and hysterical” media coverage of the case of Derek Deevy, the supposed “King Con” of a broader problem of welfare scroungerphobia (Golding and Middleton, 1982, p 61).