Age Friendly Island Training
Summary
The Age Friendly training was written in January 2016. It looks to address cultural attitudes among ageing focusing on physical barriers, physiological barriers and environmental barriers. We worked with a small Task and Finish group made up of senior leads from Isle of Wight Fire & Rescue, Hampshire Police, Southern Vectis (Local transport provider), to ensure that the training would benefit all customer facing staff. When the first pilot sessions were delivered these were to staff from the Age Friendly Island steering group and the Police and Fire service
Age Friendly Training is training aimed at staff and organisations that work with older clients or customers. The UK has an ageing demographic and it is crucial that the professionals who serve clients or customers have a clear understanding of the issues faced as we age and how to improve their ability to communicate with older people. The training looks to increase delegate’s knowledge of the challenges an ageing population may bring, as well as the vast opportunities in preparing for, and adapting to the potential needs of this consumer group.
The course has been directly delivered by Age Friendly Island to over 520 delegates across over 25 different organisations in 40 individual sessions; ranging from tailored sessions for explicit departments to Train the Trainer packages which can be modified for organisational roll-out. This includes many major organisations such as the Isle of Wight Council, HM Prison Service, Hampshire Constabulary, Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service, Red Funnel Group, Wightlink Ferries, TESCO, Southern Water, Southern Housing, Go South Coast Group, Amey, Clancy Docwra and Age UK nationally, amongst many others.
The course is split into four sections:
- Understand what is meant by an ‘Age Friendly’ area.
- Recognise the ageing process and its impact on the quality and challenges of daily life.
- Be equipped with a range of communication skills which will benefit a range of older people who have different age-related needs.
- Enable training participants to look at the physical environment of their workplace and suggest ways in which it could be made more accessible to older people. (This is a bespoke module, tailored to fit the organisations needs)
In 2018 our Age Friendly Training received accredited provider status with the CPD Standards Office, confirming that we provide quality-assured, benchmarked materials and a high standard of delivery. Organisations can now be confident they are investing in training which has been rigorously examined by a professional panel. This has contributed to our excellent feedback in which every delegate that has undertaken the course has responded that they found the training either ‘good or very good’.
Website: http://www.agefriendlyisland.org
Key facts
Main target group: Both younger and older people (i.e. intergenerational)
Other target group(s): All professionals and people who have a customer facing role including younger people.
Sector(s): Education, Health, Housing, Information and communication, Transportation
Desired outcome for older people:
Meet their basic needs
- Ageism
- Accessibility
- Ageing in place
- Dementia
- Healthy behaviours (e.g. physical activity)
- Intergenerational activities
- Inclusion
- Participation