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Background: To sufficiently house and support persons experiencing homelessness (PEH), deeper understandings of the cultural appropriateness and responsiveness of community resources and the service delivery system is essential. In the case of Metro Vancouver, Canada, the cultural appropriateness and responsiveness of Housing First as a service model for supporting PEH was explored. Methods: Local service providers and stakeholders (n = 52) participated in three full day service-mapping workshops to identify Housing First supports for older adults, youth, and women experiencing homelessness, as part of a municipal-wide participatory and action-oriented study. Data were analyzed using a structured framework thematic analysis approach and cultural safety and humility lenses. Results: We generated three key themes: (i) insufficient built environments create challenges across gender and age, (ii) cultural safety and humility concerns at the intersection of gender and age, and (iii) implications for a culturally-responsive Housing First implementation. Conclusions: Findings informed the development of a Culturally-Responsive Planning resource to support housing, health, and social service providers who are implementing Housing First initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although moving from institutional to home-like long-term care (LTC) settings can promote and sustain the health and wellbeing of older adults, there has been little research examining how home is perceived by older adults when moving between care settings. A qualitative study was conducted over a two-year period during the relocation of residents and staff from an institutional LTC home to a purpose-built LTC home in Western Canada. The study explored perceptions of home amongst residents, family members and staff. Accordingly, 210 semi-structured interviews were conducted at five time-points with 35 residents, 23 family members and 81 staff. Thematic analyses generated four superordinate themes that are suggestive of how to create and enhance a sense of home in LTC settings: (a) physical environment features; (b) privacy and personalisation; (c) autonomy, choice and flexibility; and (d) connectedness and togetherness. The findings reveal that the physical environment features are foundational for the emergence of social and personal meanings associated with a sense of home, and highlight the impact of care practices on the sense of home when the workplace becomes a home. In addition, tension that arises between providing care and creating a home-like environment in LTC settings is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Funding bodies increasingly require researchers to write lay summaries to communicate projects' real-world relevance to the public in an accessible way. However, research proposals and findings are generally not easily readable or understandable by non-specialist readers. Many researchers find writing lay summaries difficult because they typically write for fellow subject specialists or academics rather than the general public or a non-specialist audience. The primary objective of our project is to develop guidelines for researchers in Canada's AGE-WELL Network of Centres of Excellence, and ultimately various other disciplines, sectors, and institutions, to co-create lay summaries of research projects with stakeholders. To begin, we produced a protocol for co-creating a lay summary based on workshops we organized and facilitated for an AGE-WELL researcher. This paper presents the lay summary co-creation protocol that AGE-WELL researchers will be invited to use. Methods: Eligible participants in this project will be 24 AgeTech project researchers who are funded by the AGE-WELL network in its Core Research Program 2020. If they agree to participate in this project, we will invite them to use our protocol to co-produce a lay summary of their respective projects with stakeholders. The protocol comprises six steps: Investigate principles of writing a good lay summary, identify the target readership, identify stakeholders to collaborate with, recruit the identified stakeholders to work on a lay summary, prepare for workshop sessions, and execute the sessions. To help participants through the process, we will provide them with a guide to developing an accessible, readable research lay summary, help them make decisions, and host, and facilitate if needed, their lay summary co-creation workshops. Discussion: Public-facing research outputs, including lay summaries, are increasingly important knowledge translation strategies to promote the impact of research on real-world issues. To produce lay summaries that include information that will interest a non-specialist readership and that are written in accessible language, stakeholder engagement is key. Furthermore, both researchers and stakeholders benefit by participating in the co-creation process. We hope the protocol helps researchers collaborate with stakeholders effectively to co-produce lay summaries that meet the needs of both the public and project funders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The provision of home and community supports can enable people to successfully age-in-place by improving physical and mental health, supporting social participation and enhancing independence, autonomy and choice. One challenge concerns the integration of place-based supports available as older people transition into affordable housing. Sustainable solutions need to be developed and implemented with the full involvement of communities, service organizations and older people themselves. Partnership building is an important component of this process. The purpose of this paper is to detail the intricacies of developing partnerships with low-income older people, local service providers and nonprofit housing associations in the context of a Canadian housing development.Design/methodology/approach A community-based participatory approach was used to inform the data collection and partnership building process. The partnership building process progressed through a series of democratized committee meetings based on the principles of appreciative inquiry, four collaboration cafés with nonprofit housing providers and four community mapping workshops with low-income older people. Data collection also involved 25 interviews and 15 photovoice sessions with the housing tenants. The common aims of partnership and data collection were to understand the challenges and opportunities experienced by older people, service providers and nonprofit housing providers; identify the perspectives of service providers and nonprofit housing providers for the provision and delivery of senior-friendly services and resources; and determine actions that can be undertaken to better meet the needs of service providers and nonprofit housing providers in order to help them serve older people better.Findings The partnership prioritized the generation of a shared vision together with shared values, interests and the goal of co-creating meaningful housing solutions for older people transitioning into affordable housing. Input from interviews and photovoice sessions with older people provided material to inform decision making in support of ageing well in the right place. Attention to issues of power dynamics and knowledge generation and feedback mechanisms enable all fields of expertise to be taken into account, including the experiential expertise of older residents. This resulted in functional, physical, psychological and social aspects of ageing in place to inform the new build housing complex.Research limitations/implications The time and effort required to conduct democratized partnerships slowed the decision-making process.Originality/value The findings confirm that the drive toward community partnerships is a necessary process in supporting older people to age well in the right place. This requires sound mechanisms to include the voice of older people themselves alongside other relevant stakeholders. Ageing well in a housing complex requires meaningful placemaking to include the functional, physical, psychological and social aspects of older people’s everyday life in respect to both home and community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Principles of aging-in-place emphasize the importance of creating sustainable environments that enable older people to maintain a sense of belonging, autonomy, independence, safety and security. Simply altering the built environment is insufficient for creating more inclusive environments for older persons, as creating ‘meaningful’ places for aging involves consideration of psychosocial and cultural issues that go beyond issues of physical space. This paper illustrates how applications of community-based participatory research methods, in particular, participatory community mapping workshops (PCMWs), can be used to access experiences of place, identify facilitators and barriers to accessing the built environment and co-create place-based solutions among older people and service providers in a new affordable housing development in Western Canada. Founded on tenets of empowerment and relationship building, four PCMWs were undertaken with 54 participants (N = 38 older people; N = 16 local service providers). PCMWs comprised (i) experiential group walks around the community to access understandings of place and community and (ii) mapping exercises, whereby participants articulated their place-based needs within the context of the new affordable housing development and surrounding neighbourhood. Dialogues were digitally recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed. Visual data, including photographs taken during experiential group walks were categorized and integrated into the narrative to illustrate place meanings. PCMWs enabled senior housing and social care professionals and decision-makers to co-construct knowledge with older tenants that facilitated place action and change. Key themes identified by participants included: identifying services and needs for health and wellbeing, having opportunities for social participation and overcoming cross-cultural challenges. PCMWs were found to be a nuanced method of identifying needs and resources and generating knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Multiple factors influence the end-of-life (EoL) care and experience of poor quality services by culturally- and spiritually-diverse groups. Access to EoL services e.g. health and social supports at home or in hospices is difficult for ethnic minorities compared to white European groups. A tool is required to empower patients and families to access culturally-safe care. This review was undertaken by the Canadian Virtual Hospice as a foundation for this tool.Methods: To explore attitudes, behaviours and patterns to utilization of EoL care by culturally and spiritually diverse groups and identify gaps in EoL care practice and delivery methods, a scoping review and thematic analysis of article content was conducted. Fourteen electronic databases and websites were searched between June-August 2014 to identify English-language peer-reviewed publications and grey literature (including reports and other online resources) published between 2004-2014.Results: The search identified barriers and enablers at the systems, community and personal/family levels. Primary barriers include: cultural differences between healthcare providers; persons approaching EoL and family members; under-utilization of culturally-sensitive models designed to improve EoL care; language barriers; lack of awareness of cultural and religious diversity issues; exclusion of families in the decision-making process; personal racial and religious discrimination; and lack of culturally-tailored EoL information to facilitate decision-making.Conclusions: This review highlights that most research has focused on decision-making. There were fewer studies exploring different cultural and spiritual experiences at the EoL and interventions to improve EoL care. Interventions evaluated were largely educational in nature rather than service oriented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the experience and process of using community mapping as a tool for collecting data on the functioning of housing-related support services in Metro Vancouver. We outline our mapping methods and discuss strengths and challenges encountered during workshops aimed at understandings how the system of housing-related supports function. Strengths were that workshops provided a forum for social participation and engagement. In addition, mapping is a research tool that enables local knowledge of service functioning and service gaps to be accessed and exchanged. Challenges include ensuring diverse representation; reducing power imbalances; and having adequate space to accommodate interested participants., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: Multiple factors influence the end-of-life (EoL) care and experience of poor quality services by culturally- and spiritually-diverse groups. Access to EoL services e.g. health and social supports at home or in hospices is difficult for ethnic minorities compared to white European groups. A tool is required to empower patients and families to access culturally-safe care. This review was undertaken by the Canadian Virtual Hospice as a foundation for this tool., Methods: To explore attitudes, behaviours and patterns to utilization of EoL care by culturally and spiritually diverse groups and identify gaps in EoL care practice and delivery methods, a scoping review and thematic analysis of article content was conducted. Fourteen electronic databases and websites were searched between June-August 2014 to identify English-language peer-reviewed publications and grey literature (including reports and other online resources) published between 2004-2014., Results: The search identified barriers and enablers at the systems, community and personal/family levels. Primary barriers include: cultural differences between healthcare providers; persons approaching EoL and family members; under-utilization of culturally-sensitive models designed to improve EoL care; language barriers; lack of awareness of cultural and religious diversity issues; exclusion of families in the decision-making process; personal racial and religious discrimination; and lack of culturally-tailored EoL information to facilitate decision-making., Conclusions: This review highlights that most research has focused on decision-making. There were fewer studies exploring different cultural and spiritual experiences at the EoL and interventions to improve EoL care. Interventions evaluated were largely educational in nature rather than service oriented.