East Riding JSNA

Health and Wellbeing Assessment in the East Riding

Healthy Ageing

Age Friendly Communities

An Age-Friendly Community is a place where people of all ages can live healthy and active later lives. These places make it possible for people to continue to stay in their homes, participate in the activities that they value, and contribute to their communities, for as long as possible.

There are a number of reasons why taking an age friendly approach is useful.  The country has been experiencing a demographic shift towards an ageing population for some time, and rural and coastal areas are more greatly affected than urban areas by this.  By committing to becoming an age friendly community we are acknowledging that this means change is needed to ensure our communities work for us as we age.  The approach aims to reduce inequalities experienced by older people – age is a protected characteristic and inequalities can accumulate over a life time.

Taking a preventative life course approach to healthy ageing will deliver positive outcomes for all ages and potential to deliver savings in the long run. The approach provides a framework to make strategic locally informed decisions using available resource and enables meaningful engagement with older people. By joining the UK and global Age Friendly Communities network we will be able to learn from other areas about what works and share successes.

Two frameworks built on evidence of what supports health and active ageing in a place are used to guide communities with the “what” and the “how” of creating an age friendly community.

The Eight Domains of Age Friendly Communities are the areas which, when acted upon, can help to address barriers to ageing well.

The four stage programme cycle describes the process communities go through to make their communities more age friendly.  This cycle on average taking five years and would be repeated for a continual focus into the future.

East Riding of Yorkshire Age Friendly Community State of Ageing Report

As part of stage 1. “Engage and Understand” a baseline profile has been created.  This is an update of the previously published Ageing Well Intelligence (2018).  It also describes the range of assets and services on offer in East Riding in relation to the eight domains and incorporates the views of older people themselves and stakeholders in terms of what an age friendly community, means to them, what we have that is Age Friendly and what more we could do.   The East Riding of Yorkshire Age Friendly Community State of Ageing Report, January 2025 can be seen here:

In 2024, during Stage 2 “Plan Strategically” the necessary approvals were achieved to become a member of the UK network.  In 2025 the Steering Group and partner network will be moving into Stage 3 “Act and Implement”.

The Age Friendly Communities approach connects to a range of other East Riding Strategies

  • Health and Wellbeing Strategy
  • Carers Strategy
  • Older People’s Housing Strategy

Further information:

Tags: Adult