Community asset Mapping: Age Well

Healthwatch Essex worked with other organisations to consider what is working well for the Ageing Well in North East Essex, and also what could be improved upon to reach those facing challenges to accessing available programmes. They found the following factors works well for North East Essex residents:

• Feeling connected, having access to opportunities for social resources, digital help and support, self-worth and motivation, and broader social engagement options.
• Knowing more about community centres and hubs, libraries, social groups, and faith groups
• Understanding the advocacy support through knowing where resources are and how it all comes together, particularly for unpaid carers.
• Getting involved in volunteering opportunities.
• Understanding, inclusion and enjoyment via the celebration of international cultural days and events which offer meaningful interactions with older people
• Promoting the role of Community Connectors, Social Prescribers, local Facebook groups and social media, Transport schemes and day excursions
• Fostering respect and harmony between people and communities by creating positive contact between members of different social groups, including those from younger and older age groups
• Extending Care homes’ activities to the wider community and encouraging social harmony, reducing prejudice and preconceptions of age.
• Offering community-based integration programmes, forming more diverse relationships, extending education about various health needs, understanding adaptive lifestyles and increasing sensory awareness
• Increasing awareness of activities which promote wellbeing
• Maintaining engagement of some people at an early (rather than acute) point of intervention through promoting access and timeliness
• Joint working between community-based services and providers of mental and physical wellbeing services are also enablers to assist people to access the wellbeing services where they may feel stigmatised or worried about the delivery of the latter services
• Using wider available resources such as Alexa, rather than introducing new apps and different devices

They found the following actions could help overcome barriers to accessing services:

• Fostering a positive way of responding to complexity of circumstances, e.g. multiple health conditions, restricted income, dislocation from interpersonal networks
• Reducing the stigma of psychological and sociological effects of the ageing process.
• Tackling poor digital skills, for some there is a lack of opportunity to access digital support (e.g. lack of smart phone, tablet or PC) as well as possible resistance to ‘new’ technology
• Challenging negative reflections and personal perception.
• Addressing the lack of acknowledgement of current contributions, for instance in relation to unpaid care
• Developing local initiatives to minimise the impact of the lack of local opportunities, community groups and/or transport to amenities in some areas.
• Understanding the complexity of risk factors such as unemployment, geographical location, poverty and patterns of social relationships which could create more significant hardship
• Addressing geographical mobility
• Enhancing engagement with carers of people with LD, PD and MH who are concerned about their loved one’s wellbeing in case of their own illness or death
• Exploring the fear of crime or threats to personal safety  with a view to managing down that fear
• Increasing the provision of sufficient nutritious food as a direct result of the cost of-living crisis
• Expanding the focus of Care planning, not only on commissioned services and adaptations but to include social/emotional needs and resources.
• Accessing some services creates a barrier, for example wait times for Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression (formerly IAPT), NHS acute services (including pain management) for treatment and difficulties in accessing some GP services.