EVALUATION OF AGELESS THANET: PLANNING FOR LATER LIFE

Description of Planning for Later Life

The Planning for Later Life workstream was designed to provide intensive support to people aged 50 and over to help cope with change. People identified as being at risk of social isolation had key interventions from trained Life Planners to prevent isolation occurring, or minimising its length.

The service was originally delivered to individuals over 50 facing social isolation in 4 targeted wards in Thanet- Birchington North, Birchington South, St Peter’s and Viking- but expanded out across all of Thanet in 2016.

Life Planners worked with individuals on a one-to-one basis to understand their personal needs and develop a plan with that individual. Support offered ranged from emotional, accompanying individuals to appointments or groups, or helping people to access benefits or equipment required in their home. The nature of the support is short term, and the Life Planners aimed to help the individual adapt to the change of their circumstances and then be able to continue to live a fulfilling life without becoming socially isolated.

Evaluation approach The overarching design of the evaluation is based on the RE-AIM framework (http://www.re-aim.org/). This framework facilitates collecting evidence of impact across a number of key dimensions (Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance), capturing impact on individual and process outcomes by utilising both quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (interviews/focus groups) methods.

Quantitative data were provided at the start and end of PfLL support with completion of the Ageless Thanet questionnaire.

Qualitative data was collected from a wide range of sources, covering all stakeholders involved in the delivery of the workstream. The evaluation team provided data through field notes, and interviews with participants and staff. This was augmented with a number of sources provided by the delivery partners Citizens Advice (CA) and lead organisation SEK (e.g. Test and Learn reports and feedback collected from CA). Table 1 summarises the data analysed under each of the RE-AIM domains.