On Thursday 26th September, tenant organisers in Hulme tower blocks presented a showcase of their amazing work to improve the lives of older and vulnerable people to a room full of public sector and university leaders keen to learn from their achievements and understand how they can support this important work going forwards.
Bernie Enright, Director of Adult Social Services at Manchester City Council, shared how she was impressed by the way this approach involves tenants taking the lead in prioritising their needs. Abid Mumtaz, Head of Commissioning for Adult Social Care, encouraged the team to raise the profile of their work far and wide so others could learn how to take a community-led approach to securing the rights and dignity of older people living at height.
Hulme tenants’ innovative Naturally Occuring Retirement Community or ‘NORC’ approach built on a series of exchanges with Muungano Wa Wanavijiji which Tina Cribbin describes in her blog Survey’s for Social Justice where activists shared how they achieved change by bringing their communities together around shared priorities in Nairobi’s informal settlements, and led their own data gathering and neighbourhood profiling to show the numbers of people in need compared to the services and infrastructure currently provided by the state.
What was the catalyst?
The work began at Hopton Court tower block during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when Tina Cribbin and Anne Finnegan at On Top of the World Project became seriously concerned about the isolation of older people, with people dying alone in their flats with no end of life care, and the high numbers of older people falling through the gaps between health, housing, and social care support. From there, CLASS supported tenants to form a new group called Hopton Hopefuls and develop a partnership with Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing – MICRA (University of Manchester), Cornbrook Medical Practice, and One Manchester. The first step was in depth interviews with tenants and to develop a basic understanding of the challenges facing older and disabled tenants living in poverty at the block.
Hopton Hopefuls then worked with CLASS to co-design community research training and a tenant-led survey, successfully achieving the highest response rate to any consultation carried out at the block because it was tenants talking to tenants with 54% of tenants participating. Over time, Hopton Hopefuls were able to expand to become Aquarius Community Savers in order to bring together tenants from across different tower blocks and other areas of the Aquarius estate in Hulme. Together with Adult Social Care, One Manchester, MICRA and the Manchester School of Architecture, tenants were able to develop a new partnership called Ageing Well in Place in Hulme which focused on adapting a model from New York high rise called Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities or NORCs.
What is a NORC?
A common characterisation is: “A living environment or area that contains a large concentration of older adults that has happened ‘naturally’ over time usually within high-rise tower block accommodation.”
NORCs have four common features but work differently in each place depending on the local context:
- Older people are in the lead of programme design and implementation working through co-creation partnerships with housing and other public providers
- On-site paid professional staff co-create with tenants and coordinate the work to ensure effective care and support for older people
- A neighbourhood model for integrated health, social care, social inclusion and housing support and services – the focus is on drawing services inwards within a particular place and providing on-site support and services which results in closer working relationships across different agencies
- Transformative social spaces underpin the potential for everything else to thrive: gnificant increases in informal social interaction create some of the most significant added value of the NORC over and above increased access to services; encourages preventative action, and is highly beneficial for mental health and wellbeing.
Building on all the success at Hopton Court, Aquarius Community Savers, On Top of the World Project and CLASS, were able to develop a new partnership with Turn2Us: a national charity focused on poverty reduction and financial resilience who also aim to reduce the cost of care for people living in poverty by co-creating local programmes led by communities. Meredith Matters has drawn on all the expertise at Hopton Court, with a tenant-led project team bringing their experiences across to a neighbouring block, Meredith Court, to carry out a second survey identifiying the particular challenges there and mentoring Meredith tenants on how to build community and develop an action plan. The three major overarching challenges in the Meredith findings are Health Inequalities, the Cost of Living and Social Isolation. Mirroring Hopton their first aims are to set up a tenant committee and a breakfast club to create a regular space where people can come for social interaction and access information and signposting support.
One Manchester were also able to present on their own commitments to supporting this work including a full replacement of the lifts at Hopton Court making sure they stop at every floor and the renovation of a ground floor three bedroom flat into a tenant governed community space.
What next?
As well as sharing learning widely and encouraging professionals to take a ‘transformative’ rather than ‘weak’ form of approach to co-production when designing services, projects and programmes, this showcase event also had the aim of establishing a basket fund. With public services in crisis, our aim is to create a new approach to funding that brings together the Universities, Manchester Local Care Organisation/Manchester City Council, and key local private sector organisations into a mutually beneficial partnership with low costs and high benefits to each investor.
This will enable Ageing Well in Place in Hulme to take forward a three year programme of work that will see the NORC spread across all six tower blocks in the Aquarius estate and begin to build community associations and lay foundations for a NORC approach in the nearby St Georges estate to continue to achieve our most important of aims: to ensure that older tower block tenants living in Hulme can live well and with dignity in the place they call home.