Anticipatory Care team – Presentation 31/10

The project has been going for 4 weeks already and the last days were still very bouncing, with new insights and lots of new elements to think about. In addition to the meetings with a the GP and another rather smaller workshop with older people, we also had the chance to talk to a young man who is taking care of his grandfather. Along with insights from our practitioners (from volunteering and social care department), we alsodid some further research on the topic. We tried to find other inspirations about what exists in our own countries, how elderly and “older life” are shown in the media, the advertisement. We gathered examples of what has been already done in Europe in term of local community solutions, getting people moving together etc… And we noticed that lots of changes are actually occurring in local areas all around us, and that it really constitutes a rich source of inspiration, especially when we’re talking about reshaping the future choreography of life.
What we also figured out is that there are already many existing facilities in Glasgow South : associations, centers, charity foundations in diverse places.

Parallel to it, we enlightened that some old moral principles, fears and values are settled down in everybody’s mind for years. Cultural considerations, pride, lack of understanding from both sides, the young and the old, are mostly linked to the overriding message that gets communicated by the media, which increases the barriers to design an empathic society.

Comparing all these inputs, we decided to built our concept around the idea of bringing young and old people together.

As we define it in the previous presentation, our topic allows us to deal with a wide point of view on the situation and broaden the meaning of “anticipatory care” to “how to prepare yourself for the older life”.
We tried to keep in mind that doing design is also about re-thinking the entire system, looking beyond the traditional organization and re-interpreting the services, the resources and the role of the different stakeholders.

We finally came out with 3 concepts: a short term, a mid term and a long term solution. Our ambition is to reach out for the big long term solution. But to achieve this we have to build up a row of rather small solutions, step-by-step, to slowly adapt our concept. The purpose is to give the right starting point so that the concept can grow and develop by it’s own.

The ideas :
– advertising the older life
The aim is to create awareness in the whole society. Different campaigns in different evolutionary steps to fight against current media perceptions by relating to real persons through true inspiring stories. A way to give a voice to the older people and make the inhabitants realize that older people are everywhere around them.
– workshops involving various age groups
See the retired life as a time for investment in your most passionate joys in life. Giving the older people the opportunity to do what they always have been inspired by, to start something they want, and sharing it with younger generations.
– education concept
Using schools as a place for meeting and introduce the topic of the older life within the school curriculum, to break down preconceived judgments and allow young and old to begin to associate one with another. Create partnership between schools and elderly centre, as a starting point to build theses values of respect and empathy in the community.

We are now working at deepen these concepts, try to analyze thoroughly what is possible to do in the south of glasgow, using the existing resources. And also, propose a way to re-considerate the “risks” issues that came up again after our presentation, regarding the laws and policies of the system of today.

We’re open to as much feedbacks as possible !

PRESENTATION 31/10/11