Why community empowerment needs an age-friendly approach more than ever

One of the key themes of Andy Burnham’s political leadership has been increasing devolved power, and crucially that local people get a say in how that power is exercised.

The new Prime Minister has previously talked about how his place-first approach is not just about further devolving powers and budgets to Mayors' offices but about “putting it in the hands of the people and places who can use it best”.

Within his first few days of taking office he indicated that this will be the approach he takes for the country.

In his speech at Labour Party Conference recently, he said the government would “devolve more power to places to put them in charge and decide their own destiny”.

This approach is very much in keeping with the trends towards greater community engagement that were in transit before he took office.

There has been a wider movement over the past few years of councils looking to increase the involvement of residents in their decision-making through activities such as citizen's assemblies, popular assemblies, and through setting up resident advisory groups for local leaders such as elected Mayors.

Many councils are also having to reconsider their engagement structures in light of local government reorganisation – including town and parish councils which, according to the Act, will now be given more representation in community voice structures.

And in one of the flagship policies that Mr Burnham has now inherited responsibility for, the 284 neighbourhoods which have received Pride in Place Funding will need to establish Neighbourhood Boards which will be mainly comprised of local residents.

For organisations such as ourselves at the heart of the age-friendly movement, this move to greater community engagement is both welcome and familiar. Many of the members who are now part of the Network of Age-friendly Communities, encompassing more than 100 places and 30 million people, have long-standing mechanisms for engagement such as older people’s forums and networks, and have meaningfully involved older residents in shaping their age-friendly plans.

It’s one of the foundations for meaningful change that we advocate for in our age-friendly handbook, and require evidence of for acceptance to the UK Network.

The Centre for Ageing Better’s Age-friendly Engagement Toolkit provides guidance on how these engagement processes can be more inclusive of older people’s unique insight into the places they live. The toolkit has been developed through interviews with councils at various stages of engagement with older people, and focus groups with older people themselves.

The key principles of age-friendly engagement are:

• Clarity of purpose: Identify what kind of engagement is most appropriate for the topic you are exploring, and be clear on the scope of that engagement. Whether it is about informing people, consulting them, collaborating or handing people the power to make final decisions themselves, you need to make sure that purpose and scope is agreed at the outset.
• Reach: Develop a strategy for ensuring you are recruiting a diverse and representative section of your population. The toolkit advises how to remove some of the key barriers to engagement, such as digital exclusion, cultural and language barriers, mobility, and work and caring responsibilities.
• Closing the loop and evaluating engagement: What happens afterwards is just as important as how well an engagement exercise is run. To avoid activities feeling extractive, older people need to be told what has happened as a result of what they’ve shared.

This can be particularly important for people who may have experienced a lifetime of feeling that engagement opportunities are a tick-box exercise. By embracing these principles, authorities and organisations will hopefully give the whole of the community the sense that they have had a voice and by listening to that voice, it should ultimately shape something that benefits the whole of the community.

For any questions about age-friendly engagement, or the UK Network of Age-friendly Communities, contact [email protected]

This article first appeared in the Municiple Journal (MJ) on 12 October.