ZORGZAME DORPEN

What

Local authorities and care actors are actively looking for ways to build caring neighborhoods.

With this project, we meet that need and develop a support package for substantiated work on caring neighborhoods. In addition to providing methodologies and inspiration to realize all steps, we want to create a learning environment in which professionals can share experiences and learn from each other.

A caring neighborhood is able to detect what is happening in a village and adjust the policy accordingly. It focuses on care and well-being in the village, neighborhood, district, etc., and starts from a broad view of care. The Flemish policy states that a caring neighborhood aims for a “cohesive and neighborhood-oriented approach to housing, care, and well-being so that the person with a support need can continue to live at home or in the familiar environment for as long as possible.”

Goal 

The goal is to develop a support package so that local governments and care actors can make their village more caring with substantiated information. The package includes concrete tools and methodologies. Local governments can use these tools to develop a substantiated environmental analysis and formulate a supported action plan (with indicators for testing the effects of the policy and action plan).

Relevance

Local governments are confronted with a number of trends in villages, neighborhoods, and hamlets, such as new family compositions, changes in basic facilities, mobility changes, etc. This is especially true for the countryside, which is characterized by a limited range of facilities. In addition, there is a strong aging trend and a focus on strong investment in care in society, both regionally and locally.

The conceptual framework of caring neighborhoods makes it possible to think and work across policy areas such as welfare, care, work or housing and to focus on the person themselves throughout their life cycle with all their needs and requirements.

For example, a local resident in a vulnerable position (e.g. unemployment, in need of care, etc.) may simultaneously need support with his administration and, on the other hand, be active as a volunteer in the community center to help during the weekly meeting times. The broad view of caring neighborhoods, with attention to the participation of local residents in neighborhood life, transcends a narrow vision of care and also pays attention to other policy areas that are important for caring villages, namely living, work and welfare. The binding factor is the neighborhood itself, the village, the nearby living environment of people.

Our role

To achieve the objectives, we are working with the Province of Antwerp and P.PUL (KULeuven) to develop a support package.

With this support package, we provide local governments and residential care organizations with the necessary tools to independently and in a substantiated, low-threshold manner carry out an environmental or neighborhood analysis, from the perspective of caring neighborhoods and at their own pace.

The support package itself consists of three major phases. In each step, you follow think-research-report cycles.

Phase A is about the vision. This is where it starts. In this part, you will find a lot of background information about caring neighborhoods and neighborhood-oriented care. What is it exactly? Why is it important? What is the policy context around caring neighborhoods? Where are the opportunities and chances of working on caring neighborhoods? But also, where are there perhaps limits?

Phase B covers the actual neighborhood analysis. Here you will find three major steps again:

1. Quantitative analysis
2. Spatial environmental analysis
3. Qualitative analysis

Phase C is about “impact”: how do you translate the results from the analysis into concrete actions? This section contains a guide to lead you through this process.

Future

In the follow-up trajectory, ‘Collaborating on caring neighborhoods: towards a sustainable support trajectory with impact’ (with the support of the Province of Antwerp), we will continue to work with the package and develop it into a sustainable support trajectory.

To achieve this, we focus on the following objectives:

• Broadening: developing and offering suitable services to local governments and residential care organizations.
• Strengthening the implementation by monitoring, supporting, monitoring and evaluating the further steps, with the aim of increasing the impact.
• Drawing up and testing a supra-local module, within the ‘caring neighborhoods’ support package, for inter-municipal cooperation associations and primary care zones.
• Starting up learning networks around the ‘caring neighborhoods’ support trajectory."

P.PUL (KU Leuven) with the support and cooperation of the Province of Antwerp