A community participation approach to identifying older people’s learning needs - Education Research Centre | Trust for Developing Communities

What three words would you use to describe your project?

Participation, life-long learning, partnership

Community based participatory research will help to identify learning needs of older isolated people and their carers in Coldean. Planning with students, community volunteers, older people & staff from the Trust for Developing Communities and the Education Research Centre at the University of Brighton will mean that findings from the research will inform the establishment of an older people’s community group to implement an action plan to meet needs.

The project activity will take place in the locality of Varley Halls. As this is an on-going, large university residential development on the doorstep of Coldean, it is particularly important to encourage good communication and regular dialogue between the University and the community. Students volunteering as part of the research team, doing outreach, interviewing and encouraging older people to come to events at the community centre, will improve understanding and mutual respect between older people, community members and students. The project will be based at New Larchwood, which is an extra care / sheltered housing scheme in Coldean, with a community café. The project will build on the innovative community participation project at New Larchwood supported by the Trust for Developing Communities (TDC), involving the wider community in using the facility and tackling isolation of older people. The facility is a local resource that could be developed into a hub for learning opportunities in the future in partnership with adult learning centres and the University.

A team consisting of community volunteers, students and staff from TDC will be trained by a representative from the School of Education who has expertise in community based research and the application of participatory visual approaches, supporting the team to build skills in research methods, analysis, report writing. An action plan will be produced as part of the research and the TDC Community Participation Worker will support the development of an older person’s group's and other action points identified by older people in the Coldean community. The team will also facilitate dialogue with broader service providers and policy makers with interest in community development in the Coldean community. The project learning can also be more broadly applied in TDC and contribute to approaches to community-based research with older people and lifelong learning in the School of Education.

What you hope your project will achieve:

We will identify the learning needs of older women and men in Coldean so that the TDC and community can provide a greater diversity of activities in the future in response to older people’s priorities, especially those who are most isolated. We have also identified that it would be in the longer term interest of the Trust and the Education Research Centre at the University of Brighton to draw out learning on older people’s learning needs to inform life-long learning professional development in a participatory research process that is sensitive to the involvement of older men and women in the community.

Who your project will work with (and where):

The Trust for Developing Communities works with the Coldean and New Larchwood Activities group, an older people’s community group. We have also identified a need to do further outreach to isolated older people and their carers in the community, to find out what learning opportunities would bring them to the community centre and link them up with others in the community. There are already groups at New Larchwood, such as an art group.

How your project links to the idea of neighbourliness:

The focus of the project is on partnership between the University and the Coldean community. The process will enable the team to engage with isolated older people and outreach will encourage neighbourliness through conversation and increased understanding of their learning needs. The project will enable links to be built with students, provide volunteering opportunities for University staff and students to contribute to the sustainability of the project. Beyond the research, there will be opportunities to volunteer with older people’s groups, such as supporting research of the local history group, education students’ placements at New Larchwood. The School of Education is keen to engage with community-based education programmes and the research will enable us to draw out learning to inform understanding of how to include older men and women in action research and highlight age-sensitive issues regarding participatory educational research on life-long learning.

Full report available from Vicky Johnson, V.Johnson2@brighton.ac.uk