Resources
Ageing Better is collecting the learning happening locally from within the 14 partnerships.
Ageing Better national learning can be segmented into three clearly defined areas: context, connections and ecosystem.
These three interconnected segments build a picture of the macro and micro factors, services and support systems, that help us to better understand loneliness and social isolation in people aged over 50. And how they work together.
More information on context, connections and ecosystem
Index of our Ageing Better national learning reports
Ageing Better national learning reports
a) Working with specific groups of people
Bereavement
This learning report focuses on our learning from Ageing Better on bereavement and its role as a risk factor for social isolation and loneliness.
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Learning snapshot - Key messages
Economy and personal resources
This paper focuses on our learning from within Ageing Better on the role of the economy and people’s personal resources in relation to social isolation and loneliness in people aged 50+.
Economy and personal resources learning report
Learning snapshot - key messages
Intergenerational Working
This report focuses on our learning from Ageing Better on working in an intergenerational way with a focus on interventions which have involved or been delivered through a mixture of age groups
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Learning snapshot - key messages
Positive Mental Health
This report explores the role played by Positive Mental Health in relation to social isolation and loneliness in people aged 50+. It goes on to highlight the importance of and the impact that someone feeling part of a network and community plays in reducing social isolation and loneliness
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Learning snapshot - key messages
Reducing social isolation in LGBT+ communities aged over 50
This paper focuses on our learning on reducing social isolation in the LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community.
Reducing social isolation in LGBT+ communities aged 50+ learning report
Ageing and social networks: the experiences of LGBT+ adults
Learning snapshot - key messages
Working and engaging with BAME communities
This report focuses on our learning from Ageing Better in relation to working and engaging with Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.
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Learning snapshot - Key messages
Working and engaging with carers
This report focuses on our learning from Ageing Better in relation to working and engaging with carers.
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Learning snapshot - key messages
Working and engaging with older men
This report focuses on our learning from Ageing Better on working and engaging with older men.
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Learning snapshot - key messages
Working and engaging with older people living in sheltered housing
This learning report focuses on our learning around working and engaging with people living in sheltered housing
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Learning snapshot - Key messages
b) Ways to connect
Bridging the Digital Divide – Learning from Ageing Better
Many Ageing Better programmes and delivery partners have worked hard to continue to deliver as many elements of their previous face-to-face offers as possible but in different ways. These include telephone support as well as digital offers. The impact of Covid-19 may be long lasting and considerable and for many people making the transition from being offline to being online would be enormously beneficial for a wide range of practical and social reasons.
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Learning snapshot - Key messages
The Positives of Digital
Our “Bridging the Digital Divide” report identified the different groups of people struggling to access digital content, the barriers they faced and insights from across Ageing Better on how to respond.
The transition to digital platforms, has, however been hugely beneficial to some groups. It has allowed people who were house bound and socially isolated either as a result of mental and physical challenges or caring responsibilities to be a more active participant in groups and activities and therefore more connected than they had been before
In this briefing we explore the advantages which digital has brought to projects and participants in enabling groups of people to meet, helping people to feel connected and supported in new and evolving ways during Covid-19.
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Learning snapshot - Key messages
Hybrid Models of Delivery
This report aims to share early insights about an evolving model within Ageing Better, that of hybrid delivery. During the pandemic, there was a move from face-to-face to telephone and online delivery. This paper is intended for people who are developing their own hybrid models of delivery. It aims to share the issues and challenges being navigated and to provide some early insights into what we are finding works. We will update this report as more learning about what does and doesn’t work around this model of delivery emerges during 2021.
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Groups
Our learning from Ageing Better is that active participation in some form of shared social experience has a wide range of positive benefits to people’s levels of social isolation, loneliness and overall wellbeing. People who are part of a group(s) can be “buffered” against some of the risk factors for social isolation. Additionally groups are an important exit route and “connection” into other things for people. We have also heard that being a member of and feeling part of a group provides people with some resilience when they experience one or more further risk factors for social isolation such as bereavement, ill health etc.
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Learning snapshot – key messages
Role of Connectors during Covid-19
The situation with Covid-19 is constantly changing and evolving. In this paper we explore how the connector role continues to evolve against this backdrop of uncertainty. We also share and highlight key insight and learning from early Ageing Better delivery about the importance of this connector role as well as discussing what can still be achieved via that role despite the current challenges and uncertainty which people and organisations face.
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Learning snapshot - key messages
Social Prescribing Health Referrals
In this report we share learning and insight from across the programme about Social Prescribing where a health referral was involved.
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Learning snapshot - key messages
Learning from Community Connector projects
In March 2018, 8 Ageing Better programmes came together to share learning from their Community Connector projects. We defined a Community Connector as any mechanism that identifies isolated people over 50 and works with them to help them transition to less isolated through person-centred structured support.
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Learning around Community Connectors – Time Limited interventions
In August 2018 a group of Ageing Better programmes came together to share their learning around Community Connectors – Time Limited Interventions.
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Learning snapshot - key messages
Role of food in building connections and relationships
This learning paper focuses on the role food plays in building connections and relationships.
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Learning snapshot - key messages
Telephone Befriending – Learning from Ageing Better
The majority of delivery within Ageing Better to date has been via face-to-face activity but once the Covid-19 crisis happened, areas quickly reconfigured services so as to be able to deliver as much as possible via telephone.
The aim of this report is to quickly share what we are finding works and what pitfalls to try and avoid. We will aim to update the learning as we progress through the Covid-19 shut down and as new learning emerges.
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Learning snapshot - Key messages
Telephone Befriending – Update
We revisit learning from areas undertaking telephone befriending to provide an update in July 20.
Read the report update
Working with community assets
Ageing Better has an underpinning ethos of working in a strengths based way which necessarily involves working with and building on community assets and adopting community development principles. In this report we explore the learning from this approach.
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Learning snapshot - key messages
c) Programme Approach
Test and Learn
Test and learn has been a corner stone of the Ageing Better programme. In this report we take the opportunity to reflect on what test and learn has meant practically within Ageing Better as well as what it has involved and brought to the programme as a whole. We then look to highlight some key messages and ways to enable other organisations and funders to use this learning to work in a similar way.
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Learning snapshot - key messages
Age Friendly
Across Ageing Better, Age Friendly has become an increasingly important area of work. Age Friendly has the potential to be a local vehicle for retaining the engagement of older people as well as for holding and sharing the knowledge and learning which Ageing Better has developed.
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Learning snapshot - key messages
Creating a learning culture
This toolkit provides information on how you can create a learning culture in your organisation and tips and ideas from Ageing Better about how to do this. Ageing Better set out to be a Test and Learn programme - capturing not just what worked but also learning from what didn’t.
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Use of Language
Throughout the Ageing Better programme we have learnt how important the use of language is and the impact that the “wrong” terms can have.
This report focuses on our learning around the use of language and terminology within the programme and provides some top tips based on what partnerships themselves have found does and doesn’t work.
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Programme Development – reflections
This report written in Feb 20 aims to identify key messages around the organisation and set up of the Ageing Better Programme reflecting on how Ageing Better has developed and evolved over the duration (to date) of its delivery.
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d) Covid-19 Specific Learning
Communications work during Covid-19
This paper explores our learning and experiences of developing and adapting effective communications work in response to the challenges posed during Covid-19.
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Covid-19 – Transition Phase
As we went into lockdown, we wrote a short paper with our ideas on the impact of Covid-19 based on 5 years learning from Ageing Better, the cessation of face-to-face methods of delivery and move to that of telephone and online and implications as we all experienced some form of “social isolation”. During the lockdown we began collecting in-time thematic learning resulting in our two reports on Telephone Befriending and Bridging the Digital Divide. As restrictions lifted during the summer 2020 nationally we experienced an important transition point.
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Covid 19 – Learning from Ageing Better
Covid-19 is an unprecedented situation affecting the lives of people across the globe, which is particularly impacting on older and more vulnerable people. We have learned a lot about the impact of and ways of reducing social isolation and loneliness in people aged over 50 during the five years of the Ageing Better Programme to date. There is much about the crisis that feels out of control but as more people are asked or decide to retreat behind physical doors, this short paper aims to share some insights and learning from Ageing Better.
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