Title: Co-creating age-friendly social housing: A collaborative research approach to improving the experience of ageing in place
Funder: Dunhill Medical Trust

Abstract: Growing inequality and austerity have exacerbated conditions of social isolation, spatial exclusion and multiple deprivation, leading to significant divergences in health and wellbeing among older people. In response to these issues, the Age-friendly Cities and Communities movement calls for older people to have greater opportunities to determine how they age in place, working with others to co-produce initiatives that support people to remain in their home or community as they grow older. This research aims to develop and explore place-based age-friendly initiatives to improve the experience of ageing in place in social housing, realised through innovative collaborative research partnerships between older people, Registered Social Housing Providers (RPs) and academics. The proposed project will explore the following research questions: • How can age-friendly programmes be incorporated into existing living environments, such as high-rise towers or sheltered housing schemes? • What are the processes through which residents and RPs can co-create age-friendly programmes, recognising the different powers and constraints on each party? • How can co-produced ageing in place initiatives address different experiences of spatial exclusion, as a result of gentrification, social isolation and discrimination? Based on three case studies, the project aims to investigate and evaluate what processes are needed to enable new forms of collaboration between RPs and older people to emerge, and how these co-produced programmes can address different forms of spatial exclusion. In particular, the proposed research aims to develop engagement tactics and co-production processes that tackle the barriers to civic participation experienced in deprived communities. In doing so, the project will address critiques that age-friendly initiatives have failed to fully address social and ethnic diversity or those on low incomes, despite these cohorts being the ones with the most to gain from such programmes. While there has been significant research into the ‘age-friendly’ approach at the scale of the home, the neighbourhood and the city, the proposed research will pioneer the examination of age-friendly principles at the scale of ‘living environments’ (ie. a specific street, block or building). These environments have been shown to have a strong influence on older people's quality of life, but remain underexplored in the context of ‘age-friendly’ research. The study also aims to address a lack of evidence about the potential for RPs supporting ageing in place beyond the provision of specialist housing. The study aims to explore, create and evaluate how RPs can better work with their tenants to tackle the social determinants of health such as poverty, discrimination and social exclusion. The study will use a Participatory Action Research framework to engage older people and housing association officers as co-researchers, working together with the academic team to co-produce an age-friendly initiative that addresses the specific needs of each neighbourhood where a case study is located. We will draw upon a range of co-production methods, establishing collaborations working ‘with’ (rather than ‘to’ or ‘for’) older people. Each of the case study projects will be led separately by one RP and one co-researcher group in each neighbourhood, but delivered through a series of co-design workshop methods shared across the programme. By testing these methods across different contexts, we are able to explore their wider suitability and how they can be adopted in future work led by RPs and communities. The study is located in three disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods in Greater Manchester, UK. The case studies are purposefully selected to reflect diversity in geographical location, socio-economic characteristics, ethnicity as well as variation in their approach to creating age-friendly living environments. Each case studies will explore a range of approaches undertaken by RPs and local residents to developing age-friendly initiatives, each in response to the specific challenges within their communities. The programme will be developed by an interdisciplinary team (sociology, architecture, social gerontology and geography) from the Manchester Urban Ageing Research Group (MUARG), Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and Greater Manchester Housing Providers (GMHP), which makes the project uniquely positioned to contribute to policy and commissioning in Greater Manchester. The project will produce and disseminate practical guidance to RPs and provide exemplar case studies to support the adoption of age-friendly initiatives at scale, both within Greater Manchester and nationally in collaboration with the Centre for Ageing Better and the UK Network of Age-Friendly Cities.

Lay abstract: The proposed research aims to investigate how older people and social housing providers can collaborate on programmes that support people to remain healthy and socially active in their community as they grow older. Social housing tenants have significantly worse health than other groups of older people, and many are impacted by social conditions in their neighbourhoods that negatively affect their quality of life. Many social housing providers now recognise the need to rethink how they can support their older tenants, recognising the need to address the wider determinants of poor health such as social isolation, poverty and inequality alongside their existing focus on providing safe and accessible homes. In response to this, the proposed project explores how the WHO’s ‘Age-Friendly Cities and Communities’ approach, which calls for older people to be at the centre of the decision-making processes regarding issues that affect their lives, can be used to inform new programmes and initiatives in deprived communities. The project will use a participatory action research approach, which means the researcher will work ‘with’ (rather ‘to’, ‘on’ or ‘for’) older people to contribute to real initiatives that will improve older people’s quality of life. Older people will be supported to become co-researchers in each neighbourhood, ensuring that the research process and its outcomes address the needs and aspirations of the local residents. Training and support will be provided to co-researchers to ensure each project continues beyond the 30-month timeframe of the research programme. The proposed research will support the development of three case study initiatives in Greater Manchester. The three neighbourhoods were chosen because of local factors that can negatively impact older people’s quality of life, such as gentrification, racial tensions, or high levels of social isolation. In each of the case studies, older people will work with a social housing provider to co-create a programme that identifies and responds to specific challenges and opportunities in each neighbourhood. These will address both the physical environments that older people live in and opportunities for social participation in the community. The programme will be developed by an interdisciplinary team from the Manchester Urban Ageing Research Group (MUARG), Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and members of the Greater Manchester Housing Providers network (GMHP). This unique collaboration aims to develop a robust evidence base and a series of practical examples to support social housing providers to develop their own ‘age-friendly’ initiatives.

Research activity codes: 1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES;8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE