We at Kerikeri Retirement Village are thrilled that the Office for Seniors will support a programme of work as a first step towards assessing Kerikeri’s status as an age-friendly community.
An age-friendly community is a place where seniors can easily stay connected, healthy, active and respected.
We will be exploring the impact of social isolation on the elderly in Kerikeri, the barriers to social inclusion that people may experience, how we all might best respond to this issue, and the need for an age-friendly community network in our town.
We suspect that social isolation and exclusion may be an issue in Kerikeri. We know the impact that isolation can have on people because research tells us that. We fear that it might be a problem and so we are doing the research to learn more about what people in our community are experiencing.
We see the worst effects every Christmas, when isolation and loneliness impact the elderly intensely. And we saw it during our extended lock-downs during the pandemic, when many of our residents were unable to call on a support network of friends and family.
We are working with others to design the project. Far North District Council has advised us on what research has already been undertaken and how our work can complement future plans. Healthy Families Far North will help us design the research process and provide advice around whānau-centred and tikanga-led processes, ‘empathy interviewing’ and insight mining, and how best to put our findings into practice.
Other organisations interested in addressing the issue will be interviewed and invited to be part of the process. We want to be intentional about hearing the voices of mana whenua and a diverse range of age groups in the 65+ range.
We want to talk to people who live in retirement villages and those who live alone, those who are in touch with organisations and those who are not. In order to reach this latter group we will be relying on local connections and finding people through friends, whānau and neighbours.
At the end of the five-month process we will have rich insights into how our older community experiences social isolation and participation and, if there is an issue, how Kerikeri might respond if it wishes to become a more age-friendly place. Part of the work will be to assess whether the planned community centre at Kerikeri Retirement Village might provide opportunities to respond to the needs of the wider community
We are immensely grateful to have been enabled to undertake this work, and extremely excited about the potential for change that it represents. Watch this space!
