Great Northern Haven best practice model in housing for older people

Housing for older people: Future perspectives: Age Friendly Ireland’s study on housing for older people was presented at the Louth County Council AGM in County Hall, June 20th 2016.

The report highlights how the Great Northern Haven in Dundalk, a collaborative housing project developed by Louth County Council, Netwell Casala at DkIT and the HSE has become a best practice model, demonstrating a gold standard in independent living for older people.

The Great Northern Haven project was developed in 2007 to promote independent living for older people. The 16 apartment complex in Barrack Street was particularly progressive combining innovative housing design, technology to monitor wellbeing with improved access to formal and informal social supports. The project has been a major success with twelve of the original fifteen residents still living in the apartments.

The other, perhaps more significant measure of the success of the project, has been the learning’s from the project and the reach those learning are having in national housing strategy policy for older people. Age Friendly Ireland carried out an extensive impartial study into the Great Northern Haven, looking at the Great Northern Haven housing model along with other exemplary housing models in Naas, Thurrock in the UK and Bamberg in Germany.

The resulting report “Housing for older people: Future Perspectives” which was launched in Limerick in April, demonstrates how the Great Northern is a best practice model in how to best support older people living independently. In particular, it highlighted three key aspects of the Great Northern Haven that make it such a good model for housing for older people; the physical location (within 1 km of shops and public amenities), technology (using internal monitors to give security, support and comfort to residents and their families) and critically the strong social supports provided by both the HSE and Netwell Casala.

The Age Friendly Ireland report was presented at Louth County Council’s AGM on 20th June by Ashling Costello, one of the authors of the report who said “the aim of this report is to inform housing policy for older people and to encourage a collaborative approach between agencies to develop housing that truly meets the needs of older people. It is fantastic to get the opportunity to present the report to Louth County Council and to see how well it is being received both here and in other counties and most importantly, ten years after the Great Northern Haven project began, how it’s learning’s are now beginning to influence housing decisions for older people”.