Ensuring Enabling and Supportive EnvironmentsHousing and the living environment
Where one lives is critically important to one’s well-being. Older persons throughout the world often face their later years isolated or in crowded and unsafe housing. For those older persons living along, their homes should be the place they receive the services they need. The relationships among health, well-being, housing and the environment need to be understood and supportive housing programs need to be developed in all parts of the globe to enable older people to live as long as possible in familiar settings, near family and services and to do so within their limited budgets. Governments, NGOs and private enterprises should work together to ensure that every older person has appropriate shelter and comprehensive assessment and need to be considered in care plans for older persons. Transportation services in particular need to respond to the special needs of persons with age related physical or mental incapacities.
Research- Uncomplicated assessment instruments are needed to evaluate living arrangements and facilities as part of a person’s comprehensive assessment. Evaluation tools are needed to assess the extent to which one’s residence is barrier free, supportive of the resident’s life style and close to the services people require to remain independent.
- Communities need to develop check lists to ensure that the community is elder-friendly and supportive of an elders strong preference to remain independent.
- Research on person-environment interactions should reviewed, adapted to changing conditions, and applied to both new developments and the maintenance and improvement of older housing.
- The effects of environmental conditions, including particularly one’s home, on health and disability should be emphasized in gerontological and geriatric training.
- Persons responsible for special living arrangements, housing projects or neighborhoods in which many elders live need opportunities for training about how to enable older residents to age safely in place and to recognize when a move may be indicated. Training about ways to connect older residents with community services will enhance a manager or coordinator’s capacity to serve the older residents.
- Governments, NGOs, faith-based organizations and other groups should develop policies to ensure that elders have affordable, appropriate housing. Subsidies will be required for the poorest older persons in the community.
- There is a need for basic services delivered to or available in one’s home. Innovative policies and programs have emerged that warrant adaptation and replication that provide information about what works for older residents and the providers who serve them.
- While the state should have a major role in assuring safe and affordable housing for older people, NGOs and the private sector should work together to ensure that elders have the housing they need.
- Housing programs can utilize various assistive technologies to enable older people to live relatively independently despite increasing need for support.
- Policies for active ageing and for the late stages of frailty need to ensure that housing is adequate, accessible and affordable.
- Attention must be paid to the role housing plays in promoting health and independence and to the negative long-term impact which poor housing has on health.
- Home is critically important to older people; ageing in place is the overwhelming preference of most elders throughout the world. However, when that home can no longer meet a resident’s need for safety and services, the community and the family should ensure that alternatives are available including, but not limited to, care facilities.
- Research supports the first principle of the UN for older people which states that independence includes’ being able to reside at home for as long as possible.” To achieve this there needs to be a focus on the adaptation of homes, However, for some a move to somewhere more convenient, nearer amenities or family will be the right decision.
- Housing policies need to be linked with other polices and services. And for older people to have a choice they need basic income to pay for their housing and services.
- Family support, where available and wanted by both the older person and the family, can be enhanced by policies and, when necessary, housing subsidies. While most older people may find appropriate shelter in the community, others may require special accommodation and supportive living arrangements.