Creating Age Friendly Communities Toolbox
Introduction
Welcome to the Wheatbelt Development Commission’s Age Friendly Planning Toolbox. The Toolbox is part of the Creating Age-Friendly Communities in Small Towns project, which in turn forms part of a holistic solution to address aged care issues across the region.
How the Toolbox Fits
The Toolbox has been developed to assist Local Governments in the Wheatbelt to undertake the full Age Friendly Community Planning process.
The Toolbox provides resources and guidance to step Councils through each stage to ensure an informed and integrated plan. For Councils that have developed Age Friendly Community Plans, this Toolbox can assist you to review your current Plan and progress. This will ensure your Plan is up-to-date and flexible to meet community needs.
Toolbox Components
Age Friendly Community Planning Guide
The planning model used in the Guide consists of a four step solution-focused process. It will ultimately produce an Informing Strategy consistent with and complementary to your Strategic Community Plan. The first step is to gain an understanding of each unique local community.
A collaborative process involving service providers and seniors themselves is then used to develop a three to five-year plan. Each stage naturally progresses into the next, with the first three steps providing the essential information for understanding the current and longer term needs and preferences, as the basis for strategic planning and action.
4-step age friendly communities planning process:
Home Owners Checklist
The Home Owner’s Checklist has been created to allow community members to assess the age-readiness of their own (or prospective) home environment. The checklist enables an assessment of the suitability of the home as the person/s get older.
An Age Friendly Home is one that anyone of any age can live in or visit comfortably. The information can also be used to provide more accurate information to local government housing surveys (if applicable).
The information contained within the checklist has been drawn from the Department for Local Government and Communities 'Age Friendly Housing Resource kit' (2012).
