In this initial, start-up phase of the ‘Senior Friendly Communities’ project, all participating municipalities in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands are subjected to assessments. The purpose of these assessments, which started in May, is to determine how the municipalities currently support their elderly (with beginning dementia and age-related depression) and informal care-givers.
Mystery guest visits municipalities
For each assessment, a researcher from Maastricht University and the project coordinator of the specific region visit a participating municipality. So far, the assessors have always been welcomed enthusiastically in the municipalities. The assessment largely consists of a questionnaire. This questionnaire allows the municipalities to mainly self-assess what the existing offer for the target group (elderly and informal care-givers) is. This information will be complemented with the results from the “mystery guest”: an actor who pretends to be a citizen with a question for help. After completion of the assessment period, each municipality receives an advisory report in which the combined data have been analysed. This report will be sent only to the individual municipality itself, expectedly at the beginning of October. It provides an overview of what the municipality already has arranged for the target group and what areas there are for improvement. The report advises the municipalities in selecting concrete activities, from a range of several activities offered by the ‘Senior Friendly Communities’ project.
Activities Congress: Thursday November 23, 2017
On the 23rd of November, a congress will be organised in Zuid Limburg (NL). During this congress, the range of activities of the ‘Senior Friendly Communities’ project will be presented. Please mark the date of this congress in your calendar. More information will follow soon.
The activities that will be presented are already existing projects and activities concerning elderly and care-giver support in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine. The participating municipalities can select and implement a number of activities from this offer in their own municipality.
