‘Age-Friendly’ is a term used to describe projects, services and neighbourhoods that support and include older people. These enable older people to actively take part in their community, to have a voice and to remain connected. They create opportunities for older people to keep healthy and active, to learn and to engage with others.
Since 2012 Southway has been working hard to develop age-friendly projects to better the lives of those aged 50 and over and this year we were delighted when Greater Manchester was named as the UK’s first age-friendly city!
The ‘Age-Friendly Burnage’ project launched in 2016 after Burnage was chosen as one of the neighbourhoods included in the Ambition for Ageing Programme - a £10.2 million programme running across five years, funded by Big Lottery.
We’ve since supported the creation of a resident-led board which meets every six weeks. One key role of the board is managing the funding given to Burnage that supports new projects designed by local older people. So far, the board has agreed £35k spend on age-friendly projects. Over 100 local people have benefitted from craft workshops, local history classes and a bereavement support project. The funding will last until 2020 and the Board always welcome new ideas for Burnage-based projects.
We also did some research into identifying how age-friendly Burnage is looking at areas such as transport, social inclusion and housing – thank you to all tenants who took part and shared their views, experiences and ideas! We’re happy to announce that we have now identified specific areas of improvement. These findings and recommendations have been compiled into a ‘Research Folio and Action Plan’ to make Burnage more age-friendly.
Why not get involved?
We now have a range of age friendly project and activities in most of our neighbourhoods. If you would like to find out more please contact Southway on 0161 448 4200, via email on connect2southway@southwayhousing.co.uk or via the contact form on our website.