Regional Healthy Ireland Positive Ageing Week 2020

Summary

Positive Ageing Week (PAW) is an Age Action Ireland initiative. The focus is on community based events, organised by groups and individuals throughout Ireland, and national events organised by Age Action and its partners.

This year a partnership project involving the local authorities of Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford, members of the Older Peoples Council from each of the 5 local authority areas and staff from the HSE in both the South East and Mid West created a virtual positive ageing week. This project was led by staff from Tipperary County Council.

The content showcased was streamed live each day via zoom over 3 themes and the information relating to each recording and link to each recording is available here under the heading of our 3 Themes: Health and Wellbeing, Information and Culture and Diversity

This Regional Action for Positive Ageing has been funded by The Healthy Ireland Fund, supported by the Department of Health and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs

An overview of Healthy Ireland across the counties of Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford is provided by Dr Derval Howley, Head of Service Health and Wellbeing CHO5

Website: https://www.tipperarycoco.ie/positive-ageing-week

Key facts

Main target group: Older people in general

Other target group(s): also targeted younger people to engage and support older adults to access content

Sector(s): Health, Housing, Information and communication, Long-term care, Other, Social protection

Other sector(s): culture and diveristy

Desired outcome for older people:
Learn, grow and make decisions

Other issues the Age-friendly practice aims to address:

Ageing in place
Dementia
Disasters and emergencies
Inclusion
Participation

Contact details

Name: Fiona Crotty

Email address: fiona.crotty@tipperarycoco.ie

Age-friendly practice in detail (click to expand):

Engaging the wider community

Project lead: Local authorities

Others involved in the project:

Local authorities
Older People’s Association
Social or health care provider

How collaboration worked: This was a partnership project involving the Age Friendly Program from the 5 counties in South East Ireland, Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford. The project was funded by Healthy Ireland and part of a Regional Approach to Positive Ageing led by the Health Service Executive (HSE) . The working group was lead by staff from Tipperary County Council, Community Section, with staff from Tipperary Library Service, HSE Health and Wellbeing and a representative from the Older Peoples Councils from Carlow, Kilkenny, Waterford and Wexford. the content for the week was suggested by the working group and the working group focused on engaging the content provider to showcase during Positive Ageing Week 2020. the recordings captured are available on youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh5Cw-f2PxbwJgoVnP7E5rg and we hope to add further content to this as time evolves

Older people’s involvement: Older people were involved in the age-friendly practice at multiple or all stages

Details on older people’s involvement: representatives from the Older Peoples Council from the 5 Local Authority areas of Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford and part of the overall Regional Positive Ageing Planning Forum, led by the HSE. The working group that came together to plan the activity for Positive Ageing Week 2020 had active participation from the chair or representative from the Older Peoples Council with suggestions regarding content, method of delivery and also introducing showcases and going on the radio

Moving forward

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: No

Do you plan to evaluate your age-friendly practice? Yes

Feedback:
Overall the feedback from those who engaged found the content very informative and beneficial and already the content has been shared on other platforms and is being used by agencies and groups. the challenge of providing this information in a virtual manner for an older audience is recognised and collectively we are working on engagement of older adults in Digital Capacity to ensure this content and capacity is increased

Expansion plans:
the Regional Forum will review adding additional content and also supporting building digital capacity for older adults and ensuring in our nursing homes that residents can engage and benefit from this content

Looking back

Reflections:
This project without question enhanced the profile of Positive Ageing and Age Friendly across the region. It was disheartening to have low engagement numbers for the daily session. It is important that work continues by each partner to use and promote the availability of the content which provides fantastic information on a range of services and supports across the counties. It is recommend that additional content, prepared and linked to the KEEP Well campaign is added to the You Tube Channel as a central repository for all partners to showcase information on. In planning for 2021 that the content we have captured and can still be showcased but that if we were to were to proceed with a focus on Positive Ageing again in 2021 to coincide with Positive Ageing Week the recommendation from the planning group would be to have a month long engagement for the month of September culminating on the 1st of October with only 1 event or activity scheduled per day. In addition we would recommend 1 link or registration would be all that would be required to ensure minimum challenges for engagement. In the intervening time we can all work collectively to build digital competencies with older adults, take on board the feedback from the OPC reps and look forward to 2021 and delivering another high quality outcome.

Challenges:
o The main challenges were in providing an online campaign to a target audience that were not engaged digitally. o The content that is secured however which was showcased for Positive Ageing Week will be of benefit far longer than the week itself and as well as being showcased on each of the partner local authority sites the recordings are also showcased on a youtube channel. o The registration for each individual time slot was cumbersome especially if you were not technologically minded. o The length of time online each day was significant if you were to engage with time slot.