View of a typical senior citizens Characteristics and Needs
1. Fictional representative characters,
illustrating the broad spectrum of needs
of senior citizens
Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer and Social PlannerSkype:
Rinat.Ben.Noon Tel-054-3361941 bnmrinat@gmail.com
A Tool for Expanding the Circle of
Service Providers for Senior
Citizens
2. The Creation of a New Age
Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer and Social PlannerSkype: Rinat.Ben.Noon bnmrinat@gmail.com
Enormous increase in the number of senior
citizens as opposed to other age groups
Heterogeneity of senior citizens, and the changing
characteristics of people who were born after World
War II as to their individual capacities, consumer
behavior, leisure habits and their desire for realizing
personal goals
3. The New Age Challenge for the
Municipality System
Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer and Social PlannerSkype: Rinat.Ben.Noon Tel-054-3361941
bnmrinat@gmail.com
The Innovation Challenge: “inventing" and developing new
solutions designed for this growing group of residents, which is
heterogeneous in terms of age, level of functioning, personal and
economic capabilities and which is more diffusely located within the
urban space.
The Funding Challenge: finding new economic models that
combine the city's resources through its own financing and
donations, sale of services and by employing senior citizens
themselves to operate services.
The Equality Challenge: helping the more vulnerable
groups that are unable to purchase the supply of private
service, sports, culture, housing and health.
The Service Challenge: recognizing the new and diverse
needs and changing the image of senior citizens while
building new services to address these needs.
4. The service challenge
Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer and Social
PlannerSkype: Rinat.Ben.Noon Tel-054-3361941
The Vision
Creating innovative solutions to new and existing
needs, for the variety of senior citizens
The Target
Expanding the circle of service providers for senior
citizens beyond to include more than social and
health care workers.
The Method
Presenting fictional, representative characters to
illustrate the broad spectrum of senior citizens
5. The purpose of building profiles
Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer and Social
PlannerSkype: Rinat.Ben.Noon Tel-054-3361941
Addressing a message that senior citizens are a
heterogeneous group therefore needing different
solutions for different problems .
Inspiring the development of further services.
Promoting senior citizens as a target audience and
integrating them in the municipality work plans.
6. Qualitative Data for Profiles
Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer and Social
PlannerSkype: Rinat.Ben.Noon Tel-054-3361941
Based on looking at data from all kinds of field work
involving issues such as :
Requests from families of dementia patients
Public transportation problems
Lack of elevators in older buildings
Ethnic group considerations
Senior citizens’ discussions about dreams for self
fulfillment
7. Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer Rinat.Ben.Noon Tel-054-
3361941 bnmrinat@gmail.com
Shmuel
Cohen
(82)
Holocaust
survivor,
widower
Confined to
his home
The couple
Radayi
Yaffa (65)
and
Nehemiah
(69)
Born in
Holon
Tel
Giborim
Etty (67)
and Yoram
David (72)
New in
Holon
Kiryat
Ayalon
Zehava
(75) and
Hayya (77)
widows,
members
of the
senior
citizens
club
Jesse
Cohen
Avner
Menachem
(78)
Social
activist
downtown
Holon
Julia (60)
and her
mother
Raya (86)
Immigrant
s from the
USSR,
Kiryat
Sharett
8. Holocaust survivor, widower. Confined to his home
Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer and Social
PlannerSkype: Rinat.Ben.Noon Tel-054-3361941
Shmuel was born in Romania. He survived the
holocaust, together with his younger brother.
He immigrated to Israel. As a young man and served in
the army and e married Rivka, also a refugee from
Romania.
He was employed as a production worker in an
industrial firm.
Shmuel was widowed At the age of 77 and two years
later he had a small strake. Since then he has been
confined to this home.
The fact that he is stuck at home, without any social
company and wthout any physical activity has led to a
sharp decline n hs physical and mental functioning. It
is likely that he will move to an old age home.
9. The Radayi couple- Yaffa (65) and Nehemiah (69)
Tel Giborim
Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer and Social
PlannerSkype: Rinat.Ben.Noon Tel-054-3361941
The Radayi couple- were born to immigrant families in the Tel
Giborim neighborhood.
Nehemiah continues to work part time inb the Holon
industrial area and Yaffa is currently helping to rear her
grandsons.
Yaffa is very active while Nehemiah prefers to stay at home.
The couple live very modestly within their means. Yaffa goes
to gym classes at the community center near their home, but
Nehemiah, who was an amateur ping pong player in his youth,
has not done any sports activates for many years. Yaffa would
really be grateful if you could convince Nehemiah to leave the
house and participate in some sports activities. She think it
wouldbe more attractive for him if he could attend sports
classes or activities together with his grandsons or with men
in his age . Foe example: Jude or swimming.
10. Eti (67) and Yoram (72)
Newcomers in Holon
Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer and Social
PlannerSkype: Rinat.Ben.Noon Tel-054-3361941
The couple, who had lived previously in a rural community in the
Galilee, followed their daughter and moved to the neighborhood of
Kiryat Elon. Yoram was formally a doctor in Tzfat hospital and Eti
was a school principal in one of the regional schools.
Until recently, the couple had been living well and used to go
abroad. They enjoyed the proximity of their neighborhood to Tel
Aviv where they could partake in different cultural activities. They
also used to look after their grandchildren in the afternoons.
Lately there has been a sharp decline in Yoram’s mental condition.
He tends to forget a lot, and is often irritable and nervous. Eti
refuses to accept the fact that her husband has dementia.
Their children feel powerless about their father’s deterioration and
are confused about their mother’s refusal to accept the new
situation.
11. Julia (60) and her mother Raya Luvensky (86) Kiryat Neighborhood
Sharett East
Rinat Ben-Noon PhD Geographer and Social PlannerSkype: Rinat.Ben.Noon Tel-054-
3361941 bnmrinat@gmail.com
Julia immigrated to Israel from Belarus in 1990. Since then, she
has raised her two sons, relying also on the assistance of her
mother, Raya.
She works at a bank in Tel Aviv as is eligible for retirement within
two years, but is considering her moves. she fears a decrease in
her economic level and therefore feels that she should work as
long as she can. On the other hand, she desire to rediscover that
artistic side of herself, that was part of her life, before she
migrated to Israel.
Since Raya`s grandchildren grow up, she has felt that her eyesight
has been failing. She also feels a deterioration in her level of
understanding, so is much less mobile than before. so now she
spends most of her time at home, or just sitting on the bench on
the street.
Editor's Notes
My name is Rinat Ben Noon. I work for the City of Holon in Israel, a city of 200,000 people of which 15% are senior citizens. (Women over 62 and men over 67). That means approximately 30,000 senior citizens.
Three years ago, the city began working on a master plan for senior citizens, inspired by age-friendly cities. At the end of the process I was appointed as the urban integrator to implement the plan.
My main task is to acquaint service providers in the city with the SC of Holon. This is for the purpose of defining new and innovative services.
I encountered difficulties in the role of the municipality in the development of infrastructure and services for senior citizens. The task at hand is to change patterns of thinking among service providers regarding the image of senior citizens and their needs.
People used to divide the age of a person into the following: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age.
Old age meant retirement, sickness, inactivity and neediness.
In the last 10 or so years, the retirement years of the baby boomers, there has been an enormous increase in the number of senior citizens. They have made an impact on the urban and economic fabric of society and are much more visible than before.
This has created an awareness and readiness of the municipal system to address this New Age of citizens.
Much has already been said and written about the plans for “Age Friendly Cities” and other programs. Nevertheless, my presentation will deal with the municipal system, being the body which is supposed to implement such plans.
The big “mass” of senior citizens, the variety of sub-groups among them, the differences in their needs and personal abilities, all create a great challenge to the municipality.
Moreover, until now the main workers who engage with senior citizens were social workers and health system workers. The variety of master plans of senior citizens should bring in new professional roles, such as workers in the engineering department and the sports department. Until recently, these people involved in new services of the municipality, have not seen the senior citizens as their audience, but rather other special needs groups such as handicapped people and children. For example, sport for this age group was limited only to senior citizens coming to centers for old people. In addition, the type of sport provided was only for improving health, such as exercises for bone density, exercising in wheel chairs. Now there is a new approach- to develop new types of sports such as martial arts and to locate these activities in multi age centers such as community centers.
My decision to use this method of presenting fictional characters representing different kinds of senior citizens is based on my experiences and frustration trying to “push” my ideas for implementation using traditional presentation techniques in my meetings with the municipalities.
Furthermore, we are in a period of historical development in terms of the elderly. There are not enough successful examples of implementation systems to copy. Therefore service providers in the municipality should be social entrepreneurs themselves, making up and trying new services and infrastructures which were not examined before.
I would like to offer a new way to illustrate the senior citizens groups in order to clarify the complex picture, pointing to the new needs.
It is important to convey a message that senior citizens are a heterogeneous group and not one-dimensional. Therefore we must create different solutions for the different groups within the population of senior citizens.
There is a lack of knowledge about Senior Citizens. This is a special part of the general population having unique problems requiring unique solutions.
The practical aim of this work is to make service managers see the Senior Citizens as a target in their routine work.
These issues, arising from the collection of data in the field, are used to build a reliable and convincing character, who is not soon forgotten. I also want to emphasize certain issues, so have given them a focus, by including them in the characteristics of my profiles.
By means of the characters’ stories, we can raise an issue that the service provider should address.
Instead of saying there are 30 % of retirees in the 75 years and older group, another 50% of retirees in the 60 to 75 years old age group and 20% of retirees under the age of 60, we can introduce characters with names and faces from all of these age groups- and they will be remembered by the service providers.
All pictures are from the internet and were randomly chosen.
Each profile has an age and place of residence. I have also included a title, which means the group which this person represents such as
holocaust survivor, elderly born in the neighborhood, new resident etc . This set of profiles which you see here on this slide is my gallery from Holon. I will choose to talk about some but not all of them just because of time limitations.
Shmuel represents two groups- holocaust survivors and elderly who are confined to their homes (either because they are disabled and in a wheelchair, or because they live in an old building without an elevator.
There are 3000 holocaust survivors in Holon. Welfare, however, only works with 600 of them.
There are thousands of elderly who are confined to their homes. The issue we need to address is how to bring company, entertainment, groceries and services home to them.
The number of residents aged 60 to 69 in Holon is 18,155 men and women.
Through the couple I tell the economic narrative. The couple belong to the middle financial bracket. These are not "poor enough" to get government benefits and discounts, so constantly live on the edge financially. On the other hand they are fairly young retirees who still want to get to experience being a part of society and not to be "forgotten at home.“
Another issue is the challenge of "getting the men out of home" to participate in community activities.
This group presents the challenge of equality in the city. There is a need to develop social and community services and to connect the urban social fabric, not through private services which are very expensive. There is a need to build more platforms and social networks that will build options to participate in cultural and sports events, which are designed for everyone These are both multi-generational or one-generational.
By presentation this couple I would like to highlight few issues:
This couple represents a national social process of migration of senior citizens from countryside to the city, especially transition near their children .that mean that they did not grow in the local community and have few social connections.
Another issue is that of Alzheimer`s disease. This phenomenon is growing by hundreds of percent every year.
A further issue is that the neighborhood in which the couple lives, built for young families, nevertheless with over 30% are veterans or their 55 +, this is in contrast to the image of the neighborhood by all community and municipal employees in particular.
A further issue is that of Alzheimer's patients - the last two years there has been an increase in the number of families who apply the Senior Citizens social workers team. We Can estimat that the city Holon own face, at any given time about 2,000 families with Alzheimer's and other dementia diseases.
Julia and her mother Raya, are representatives of the community of immigrants who came here from the former USSR. During the 1990’s, about 1 million such immigrants arrived.
In this community, there is a larger proportion of senior citizens than in other communities. Another feature of this group of senior citizens is the inter-generational connection that is based on a shared household. A further characteristic is the high proportion of mothers, who are single parents. These factors result in unique issues related to language, culture and family structure.
My aim in this presentation is to address two issues concerning the implementations of Age Friendly City program by municipalities employees. and other SC master plans. The first issue is to emphasize the need to widen the circle of employees dealing with SCs in the municipal system. The second issue is my own methods of concretizing the concerns of SC by using profiles.
By addressing these issues I hope to ease the transition from planning to effective implementation.
