We’re delighted to announce that InCommon has secured another round of funding through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of the Healthy Ageing Challenge. This challenge is a competition to support social enterprises working to tackle some of the impacts of ageing, and the project we are running at InCommon is one of the 12 to be awarded funding.
With the funding, we’re continuing to design and pilot a new digital solution to make it accessible and straightforward for community groups to deliver their own intergenerational activities.
In March 2022, we developed the first iteration of the online platform, which provides schools and retirement homes with everything they need to set up intergenerational projects and run activities smoothly.
To test the platform, we partnered with Clarion Housing Group to deliver a pilot in 6 social housing communities across the UK, matching up 6 of their independent living schemes with 6 local primary schools. We onboarded teachers and retirement home managers onto the platform, supporting them to set up profiles and schedule visits, and provided everything from risk assessments to activity ideas to make the visits happen. The visits were a great success and we received very positive feedback from the people taking part:
“The tenants enjoyed every minute and can't wait for the next session. I was astounded to see the difference in one particular tenant who suffers with dementia and anxiety and is usually withdrawn, he totally came alive whilst talking to the children.”
Scheme Manager, Marten House
“It's so nice having them here, they give you such a boost. I miss my grandchildren, they live quite far away and I don't get to see them as much as I'd like. Thank you for bringing the children today.”
Older resident, Marten House
“This is exactly the kind of project our school has been looking for. One of our values is community, it's been hard to do things around that since Covid, so something like this that gets the students out and about and meeting people is great. And having a platform to do it through is really helpful, we probably wouldn't do it if it was just down to us to call up care homes and see if they wanted a visit.”
Teacher, London Meed Primary School
Following this initial pilot, we are excited to continue working with design and development agency The Idea Bureau to further improve the platform, drawing on useful feedback from our users. We will continue to partner with Clarion Housing Group and also Orbit Housing for this next round of piloting, and are seeking to test the use of the platform in more locations, growing from 6 to 20, expanding our geographical reach and connecting even more children and older people. We are also excited to announce that we will be working with the Housing Learning and Improving Network on an independent evaluation of the project.
It is extremely encouraging to see the positive impact the platform has had so far on communities and individuals, and we are still continuing to learn a lot from the process. We are excited to see how we can build on this work in the next stage of development to reach even more communities and help scale the benefits of intergenerational connection across the country.