Age-Friendly Community Resources
The Public Health Agency of Canada has put together this Toolbox, which contains many practical tools and resources to help make your community more age-friendly. These tools include great examples from across Canada of work plans, time lines, checklists, potential funders and guidelines to help you implement and assess your progress in developing your age-friendly community.
This Toolbox is intended for use by seniors, business people, city/town planners, community groups, municipal officials, recreation coordinators and other concerned citizens who are interested in developing or updating strategies for age-friendly communities. It is designed to guide the development and assessment of projects toward the age-friendly goal. Best communication practices are also provided to help deliver age-friendly messages consistently and effectively.
PHAC is promoting the implementation of the Age-Friendly Communities (AFC) model throughout Canada by working with provinces and territories, engaging partners, sharing experiences and resources with individuals, community agencies, and other groups interested in becoming more age-friendly. This Age-Friendly Communities in Canada: Community Implementation Guide is one of the resources developed by PHAC to assist communities to start up, implement and evaluate their age-friendly initiative. It is easy to use and contains lots of practical information and ideas that can help any community become more age-friendly.
Creating environments that support seniors to live healthy, active and safe lives and participate fully as valued members within their communities is one of the most effective approaches to address issues related to the aging demographic trend. This guide will be a useful tool for anyone who undertakes an AFC initiative. It provides direction regarding the broad principles and parameters recommended by the World Health Organization, but within a New Brunswick context. The intent is to encourage the AFC movement to take root in all New Brunswick communities.
The Age Friendly Community movement encourages the establishment of policies, services, and structures that promote healthy aging and wellness. These actions enable seniors to live in secure, healthy environments where they can contribute fully in society. The New Brunswick Age-Friendly Recognition Program recognizes success and encourages communities and municipalities to take sustainable action towards becoming Age-Friendly. To be recognized for their Age-Friendly efforts, communities must complete 4 basic steps based on the WHO framework. These steps demonstrate a community’s commitment to Age-Friendly principles through community engagement, and action. Each step is designed to help communities increase awareness, and gather support from key partners (e.g citizens, local agencies, non-government organizations, and local business).
Intergenerational programs and activities that bridge the generation gap help to break down barriers among people of varying ages and address issues such as social isolation, ageism, and misunderstanding. Creating supportive environments which enhance opportunities for the sharing of ideas, knowledge and experience will build upon community strengths and move New Brunswick toward creating more Age-Friendly Communities (AFC).
This Intergenerational Toolkit will help communities and organizations engage children, youth and seniors in effectively hosting intergenerational projects. It contains practical information and resources to support educators, care providers, community groups and agencies in coordinating successful intergenerational initiatives.
You may obtain a printed copy of this guide by filling an order form available HERE.
The Public Health Agency of Canada has prepared the Age-Friendly Communities Evaluation Guide to provide communities with practical information on how to use indicators to measure progress and evaluate their age-friendly initiatives.
The Guide focuses on one important aspect of developing and maintaining an age-friendly community: the use of indicators in planning, implementing and evaluating age-friendly community initiatives. The Guide not only provides information on how and why the use of indicators can strengthen community age-friendly initiatives, it also offers a menu of specific, measurable indicators that are applicable to the eight domains of community life that are being addressed in age-friendly programming.