Public health news: Age Friendly Communities

Age-friendly communities are places where people of all ages can live healthy and active lives.

Public health news: December 2024

South Tyneside Council started their Age Friendly journey with the Centre for Ageing Better in March 2022.

A baseline survey and a series of events with residents, voluntary organisations and frontline staff helped to shape the local strategy and action plan. This was approved by the Health and Wellbeing Board in January 2024.

The age friendly steering group meets every six weeks. Each meeting focuses on one of the eight age friendly themes and the leads for that theme are invited to provide their updates.

In September the focus was on Respect and Inclusion:

  • Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums (TWAM) were asked to undertake a self-assessment using established age friendly cultural standards
  • This has now been done in the South Shields Museum & Art Gallery and the Arbeia Roman Fort. The findings will be used to influence what museums can do to improve the experience for their own visitors. They will also be shared with other organisations to encourage them to do something similar. The self-assessment covers five areas, including the type of programmes offered, the facilities and communication.

For the October meeting, we invited the leads from the Civic Participation theme.

South Tyneside Council are now signed up to the Age Friendly Employer Pledge . This encourages workplaces to:

  • Create an age friendly culture
  • Hire age positive
  • Be flexible about flexible working
  • Support career development at all ages
  • Provide the health support that is needed

The next stage is to promote this to other organisations and businesses across the borough encouraging them to also sign up to the age friendly pledge.

Age Concern Tyneside South (ACTS) celebrated the International Day of Older People (IDOP) throughout the whole of October. There were activities across the borough and included the annual event at Cleadon Park on Friday 4th October. This local celebration has provided valuable support and contributes to the programme of activities across the whole of the UK.

ACTS are also hosting regularly age friendly and carers forums. If you know someone who would like to get involved and share their experiences, the next carers forum is 7th December and Older Peoples forum will be 25th January, both Saturday mornings at ACTS office on Beach Road in South Shields, 10.30-12 noon with refreshments of course!