Legacy
Legacy
Please note: this post is 1 months old and The Cares Family is no longer operational. This post is shared for information only
Linked above is a storybook which offers a snapshot of challenges, approaches, and co-designed interventions developed to increase intergenerational connection in an urban setting, through a collaboration between myself and East London Cares (ELC).
Shortly after completing this work, The Cares Family – including ELC – sadly closed. I hope these insights gathered in my work can serve as a resource for other organisations and individuals looking to foster more intergenerational connection.
Connection Matters
As an Innovation Consultant and Service Designer with experience in health policy, my work revolves around addressing complex issues such as digital exclusion, the rising cost of living, malnutrition or frequent A&E attendance. Across this broad range of social challenges – and many more – lack of connection emerges at the heart of the issue. Aside from the evidenced health and wellbeing impacts of loneliness, many people find themselves without a support net, heavily dependent on our reactive, crisis-centered state support systems.
Social fractures in the UK are particularly visible between generations, where housing costs, technological change and disappearing community spaces are just some elements of a manufactured divide between older and younger people – often reinforced by media narratives and stereotypes.
Feeling the chasm of community myself, and privy to the impacts of isolation in my job, I was drawn to The Cares Family’s relationships-centered approach: bringing older and younger neighbours together for the simple end goal of friendship. At the time I was working towards my Service Design Network accreditation at the Innovation Unit Design Academy, so I approached ELC to see if my skills could be of use.
The East London Cares Challenge
ELC created connections through free social clubs and a ‘Love Your Neighbour’ friendship matching programme, as well as targeted outreach. Through conversations with their brilliant staff I learned that they were seeking to attract more neighbours who may have benefited from the programmes, and had a desire to improve sustained participation.
To get to the heart of ELC’s challenge, I attended clubs, interviewed staff, met with other local organisations, conducted house visits and, crucially, captured insights from locals who had never heard of ELC and those who had, but had chosen not to engage.
This discovery phase surfaced critical insights around perceived stigma, safety concerns, fear of cultural divides and a general lack of visibility around non-familial intergenerational connection more broadly – see more in the storybook.
Co-Designing Solutions
Armed with these insights, I led ELC through a collaborative design process to address barriers to participation and engagement. There was never a silver bullet; answers lay within a multi-pronged approach, which had collaborating with local stakeholders at its heart.
Nonetheless, we did develop some tangible tools and resources which may be useful for other individuals and organisations looking to foster intergenerational connection (all of which you can download in the storybook):
Chatter Matters: a co-designed and tested question deck to stimulate meaningful conversation across ages. It is designed to allow people to pick or avoid topics, and choose questions which are rated on a scale depending on how light-hearted they are.
Story Postcards: warm and personalised postcards as an outreach alternative to flyers. (To boost efficiency, I also highlighted loneliness areas onto ELC dry spots, enabling a targeted approach, which could be replicated elsewhere).
Warm Welcome Journey: a new, cohesive onboarding approach emphasising anti-discrimination practices and ongoing support.
Ambassador Programmes: making use of assets (for ELC, this included highly engaged neighbours and supportive local businesses) to boost outreach capacity and deepen neighbours’ involvement.
To see these outputs and learn more about the process as a whole – which included prototyping and iterating the tools – download the storybook.
What Next?
Although East London Cares closed during the early stages of implementing our work, the process has shaped my own journey: I am currently exploring and advocating for intergenerational connection through community-orientated housing, as part of my Churchill Fellowship and work for the Cohousing Research Network. I am gathering learnings from communal living innovations in the United States and Australia, and welcome collaborations across the UK and elsewhere when it comes to aggregating and sharing learning in this space. If you would like to contribute to this thinking, please contact me.
Although East London Cares is no longer active, the lessons from this project live on, and hopefully the resources and insights shared can serve as a springboard for others working to build intergenerational community. That way, the legacy of this work – and the work of The Cares Family – can continue to live on.