Co-creating a new remote service for and with elderly people in the Netherlands

Objectives

One of the starting points for the project was the observation that, when elderly people become dependent on care, they often find it hard to get used to the range of support services available. In particular, they tend to know little about the potential of remote services. This project aimed to help elderly people to familiarise themselves with remote support services at the point before they become dependent on care.

The first step was to discover what type of services people would welcome in their lives at this stage. Later in the project ideas for new services were discussed and validated with elderly people and their carers, in a series of interviews and co-creation sessions, eventually using a prototype of the proposed service.

From the perspective of the target group, the main benefit of these new services would be that they offer an opportunity to connect more easily with organisations and with other people, from the comfort of their own homes. The primary target group was people aged 75+ who live independently at home and still reasonably healthy, although less mobile than previously. The secondary target group was the family, neighbours and close friends of these elderly people, who regularly help out with small-scale tasks and generally keep an eye out for how things are going. The remote services aim to facilitate the day-to-day communications between these people, as well as enabling contact with care organisations.

The name of the overall service offering Woonservice Gemeente Geldrop-Mierlo probably only makes sense in the local context, so we use the abbreviated name WSG here. It basically means ‘'eldrop-Mierlo local home service'.

Dr. Bas Raijmakers of STBY provided Governance International with this case study on 28 October 2010.