Friend or enemy? Cities failing seniors

Australia has a long way to go in creating a senior-friendly environment as its population rapidly ages, Victoria’s Council on the Ageing (COTA) chief executive, Sue Hendy says.

While the state of accessibility in Australia is improving in terms of existing transport under the federal government’s Disability Action Plan, Ms Hendy claims it is not addressing all issues confronted by older Australians.

“Footpaths are important, as are connecting things together, such as an accessible train to platform to road to shops,” Ms Hendy told DPS eNews.

However, she says the World Health Organisation has established the Age Friendly Cities program, which is now being welcomed by many municipalities and towns around Australia.

“The idea of the program is that older people are involved in examining the local community and making suggestions on how the community can be more age-friendly. And of course this should then be friendly for everyone, especially women with prams and young children, and people of all ages with mobility or disability problems,” Ms Hendy says.

There are eight domains in the Age Friendly project, and importantly one of them is about respect and including and engaging older people in the community.

“An important aspect that undermines this is ageism and age discrimination, there is so much that one can say on this topic; but we have a long way to go, awareness and serious action is called for,” Ms Hendy says.

COTA’s NSW project manager, Jane Bringolf, told DPS eNews that creating liveable communities for Australian seniors has been “very slow”.

“One thing that seems to come up more than anything else is transport and mobility,” Ms Bringolf says.

“Easy access to transport is difficult and the walkability aspect of footpaths even more difficult. Where there is a lot of over-hanging shrubbery, footpaths are only wide enough for one person to walk,” she says.

COTA NSW is in the early stages of planning the Liveable Communities program which recently received funding from the NSW Office of Ageing.

“The plan is to engage with local government to see how we can bring some of the issues to the fore and get them [the government] to think about issues more closely when approving developments,” Ms Bringolf says.

She says the aim is to understand what it is like for councils to implement these developments and to also produce a local resource kit.

In just three days, Ms Bringolf says 10 of the state’s councils, particularly those in rural areas, had taken an interest in the Liveable Communities program.

Ms Bringolf says creating an age-friendly environment would keep seniors active and protect their wellbeing.

“If you are where you want to be then immediately a person’s health will improve. Keeping an older person behind closed doors and imprisoned is not good for anyone, and will mean they may end up in aged care facilities much earlier than they need.

“For many years we have had a lot of goodwill and willingness to do something; but what we don’t have is it evolving into practice as fast as we would like,” she says.

US cities are also beginning to grapple with a fact of life – people are ageing quickly and they are growing old in communities designed for the nimble.

New York deputy mayor, Linda Gibbs, also spoke about the World Health Organisation initiative, but says the delay in working towards senior-friendly societies is “shocking” considering demographers have long warned that the population is ageing rapidly.

By 2050, one in five Americans will be seniors. Worldwide, almost 2 billion people will be 60 years or older; 400 million of them older than 80.

What are your thoughts on this article? Share your suggestions on the things you think Australia needs to do to create an “age-friendly” environment for its seniors.