WHAT’S GOT BETTER

Older people are finding it easier to access their local shops and shopping centres.

THE NEED

Older people identified the need for more age-friendly knowledge and awareness on the part of local businesses as well as the general community. They felt that this was a key element of ensuring places are good places to age well. In particular they wanted to be able to shop at local stores and supermarkets with more ease and convenience.

THE SOLUTION    

An age-friendly store assistant training package was co-designed in close collaboration local older residents. To ensure the best possible results, a number of routes were taken to do this, including:

-       Consulting with older people in supermarkets and going through a questionnaire with them as to what they felt would improve their experience of accessing shops and local centres as an older person.

-       Working alongside our AFA volunteers to shape a session plan to inform learners of things that older people feel are a priority when providing a good service or facility.

-       Co-delivering the training alongside older residents with local shops and businesses, which led to national promotion of the benefits of taking part in age-friendly training, as written up in ASDA’s customer magazine, ‘Sparks’.

BENEFITS             

These days, older people are finding it lots easier to access their local shops and shopping centres and a number of significant improvements have been introduced. For example, each ASDA store in Bolton now has a Community Life Champion to co-ordinate all community and charity events within the store. Other consumer-orientated businesses and shopping centres are also being encouraged to make positive changes to create more age friendly communities.

LEARNING            

Co-creating solutions with the people who will be benefitting from the results is a very successful and time-effective method of introducing change. Concepts can be agreed, discussed and implemented in the confidence that they are based on actual facts and experiential evidence.

LOOKING AHEAD 

‘Since being involved with Ambition for Ageing, we now have lots of in-store information about local community groups and services for the elderly – I would love to see this rolled out to other stores.’

Christine Baldwin, Community Life Champion, ASDA

CONTACT