Southway's leading work and research regarding 'age friendly' homes and communities for south Manchester comes from our extensive and ongoing "Age Friendly Project".

In May 2012 Southway adopted an Age-friendly Strategy which sets out the priority actions we intend to take, with partners, to meet the needs and improve the quality of life of older people. The strategy is divided into six key themes which are:
  1. Age-friendly Organisation (including Age-friendly Employer)
  2. Specialist Housing
  3. Lifetime Homes and Adaptations
  4. Information
  5. Services
  6. Lifetime Neighbourhoods 
  • Age Friendly Project: Strategy and Plans

    Click below to download the Age Friendly Brochure and read more about our strategies:

     

    • Burnage - Age Friendly Project
      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, and 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:
  • Age Friendly "Take a Seat" Campaign
    Southway's "Take a Seat" campaign is a highly successful initiative that came from our Age Friendly Project.
    The campaign aims to partner with local shops and business' so that those partners can provide a clear and friendly place to take a break for older people, whilst they are out and about in their community. The hope is that this allows for a more pleasant, accessible experience and a more open and friendly community for older people to enjoy.
    Due to the success of the campaign we have now expanded this scheme beyond south Manchester and partnered with other local authorities as well as the City Council, in order to help improve accessibility of local shopping areas and neighbourhoods.
    Below are template materials for all Age Friendly and Take a Seat Campaign partners:
  • Ageing in Place Pathfinder

    This project is led by Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and working with Manchester School of Architecture and nine lead organisations anchoring resident-led partnerships in neighbourhoods across Greater Manchester. The aims are creating strong and supportive neighbourhoods to improve connection, health and wellbeing in later life; tackling inequalities in ageing well across our city-region; and working with stakeholders to learn and create a system shift to sustain and scale delivery of a neighbourhood approach to ageing well.

    This project puts older people’s voices and lived experience at the heart and learns about what they value, the issues and barriers they experience to ageing well in local communities, through three core questions:

    · What is it like to live around here?

    · What could make it better?

    · How can we work together?

    Southway has started this project since 2022 as the Lead Organisation for Abbey Hey, Manchester. Our ambition is to make the neighbourhood a supportive and inclusive place for people over 50s to grow older with better health and wellbeing. We have established a partnership board with older residents and community stakeholders from different sectors; developed a neighbourhood action plan to deliver improvements to the physical environment, local services and activities; and carried out various co-produced projects.

    Watch the videos below to see how projects supported by the pathfinder have been impacting Abbey Hey and the people who live there...

    Age Friendly Map of Gorton & Abbey Hey

    Download your copy of the map

    This map features the four age-friendly walking routes co-created with older residents, age-friendly facilities and major landmarks in the community.

    To read GMCA’s webpage on the Ageing in Place Pathfinder Project: Click here  

  • Cohousing Research Project

    Southway is working in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University on a project to look at cohousing as an option for social housing in South Manchester. This is one of the case studies under the research project “Co-creating age-friendly social housing: A collaborative research approach to improving the experience of ageing in place” funded by Dunhill Medical Trust.

    Cohousing is when a group of people work together to create a small housing community, based on a shared desire to live in a supportive and connected neighbourhood. People have their own home, but there are also shared spaces, facilities and resources which is great for the environment.

    Residents manage the scheme, do a wide range of activities together and may even regularly eat meals together. It's a great way to make friends, connect to people and foster a supportive way of life.

    These communities can be anywhere, either by transforming existing places or creating new ones. They can also be for specific groups, like older individuals, women or the LGBT community.

    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.

    We will engage with local communities to start conversations about cohousing and what communities’ needs would be in relation to this exciting new approach to housing.

    Taking a co-creation approach, we hope to engage local residents who are interested in cohousing to form a steering group to further explore and develop Southway’s potential for cohousing.

    Click here to find out more about Cohousing from Community Led Homes