Feelings of safety in context: Social policy for and by older people 28 th August 2009 De Donder...

Feelings of safety in context:Social policy for and by older people

28th August 2009

De Donder LiesbethDominique Verté, Nico De Witte, Tine Buffel, Sarah Dury

[email protected]

Belgian Ageing Studies28th August 2009

1. History

• 2002– Flemish law on ‘ participation of elderly’

• Against ageist discrimination and social exclusion

• Involve elderly in policy planning

• Environmental analysis

– Flemish municipalities: S.O.S.– Development of a ‘research-policy’network


1. History

• 2003: Development of a ‘complete package’– Questionnaire– Research scenario– Software programme– Training programmes

• 2004: Pilot studies in 11 municipalities• 2005: Refinement of the package• 2006: Expansion over Flanders• 2009: 60.000 elderly


2. How does it work?

• Dividing tasks– Vrije Universiteit Brussel

• Scientific control

• Data cleaning

• Descriptive analyses of the data

• Presentation of the results

– Province• Coordination of the fieldwork (research supervisors)

• Department of ‘Social Planning’


2. How does it work?

– Local municipality• To draw a representative sample (quota)

• Data collection– Peer research: elderly interviewing elderly

– Finding volunteers through multi-staged system

• Administration

• Input of the questionnaires


3. Current status: 2009

• Flanders– 60.000 elderly – 6000 volunteers– 120 Flemish municipalities + 30 Flemish

municipalities – 1 Flemish municipality for the second time.– Depending on the municipality, between 65% and

85% of those contacted were willing to participate.

• Belgium– Brussels– 2 municipalities in Walloon region


3. Current status: 2009

• Europe– 2 municipalities in Italy– 2 municipalities in the Netherlands

• Side projects– Foreign elderly– Qualitative in depth research– Research scenario 2: How to translate facts and

figures into policy?– Thematic workshops– …..


4. Results

• For elderly and the municipality– Comparison possible– Active engagement of older people – Develops a sense of co-ownership– Increases the opportunities for older people to

participate in policymaking-processes

• Theoretically and empirically– Recognizing gerontology as an engaged science – Thinking about what society might be– Large dataset

Feelings of safety in context:Social policy for and by older people

28 August 2009

De Donder LiesbethDominique Verté, Nico De Witte, Tine Buffel, Sarah Dury

[email protected]

Feelings of safety in context: Social policy for and by older people 28 th August 2009 De Donder...

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