The Centre for Ageing Better and Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) established a five-year, strategic partnership to collaborate on a number of joint priorities in 2016. Following a review this commitment to continue to work together was renewed in April 2021 for a further three years.
The partnership supports GMCA and the partners in the Ageing Hub to be an exemplar as an age-friendly city region, adopting best practice and testing innovative approaches to ageing. Greater Manchester holds an ambition to be a global centre of excellence for ageing, research, technology and new ideas on ageing, and is supported in this by the work of the region’s academic institutions. Together we generate evidence of what works so more of the region’s 2.8 million residents are able to live a good later life, and evidence that can be shared nationally.
Our shared ambitions cover three main areas:
Our work with the Department for Work and Pensions on the GM Employability Support pilot is helping over 50s back to work and ensure an economic recovery from the pandemic. This is alongside supporting GMCA to publish a Greater Manchester Age-Friendly Employer Handbook, researching over 50s apprenticeships and working with Ingeus to upskill employability workers.
We‘re working to deliver safe and accessible housing by working with a range of regional partners in the Ageing Hub. With Manchester School of Architecture we published Rightsizing: Reframing the housing offer for older people and continue to support their research into the housing options available for older people with the project RightPlace. We’ve supported the work of MICRA on Age-friendly communities in the Northern Gateway/Victoria North, a significant regeneration project in Manchester and support the GM plan to increase the supply of age-friendly homes.
We’re scoping further work with GreaterSport and other partners in GM Moving designed to test and learn from whole systems approaches to working with inactive 50-70 year olds to increase physical activity levels. We’ve also worked together with GreaterSport and Transport for Greater Manchester to make recommendations on how to develop active travel strategies that are inclusive of over 50s. This built on our previous work with Transport for Greater Manchester to understand what an age-friendly transport system looks like.
In addition to these three priorities we've actively supported GMCA and partners in their commitment to tackling inequalities that were highlighted and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This has included submitting evidence to the GM Independent Inequalities Commission and providing financial support to the University of Manchester for their research on Social Exclusion and experiences of COVID-19 in older people.
