News

Activities in 9 Assisted Living Areas

Recently we reported about the start of the study Assisted Living Area’s in Kralingen-Crooswijk. Parallel to this study Fieldacademy is also working on a research on accessibility of neighborhoods. Fieldacademy is now doing research in a total of nine neighborhoods namely De Esch, Kralingen Oost, Kralingen West, Oud-Crooswijk/Rubroek, Het Lage Land, Prinsenland, Vreewijk, Lombardijen and Oud-Charlois.

 

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Assisted living areas

In the next few years, an assisted living area needs to be developed in the district Kralingen-Crooswijk. Fieldacademie has been given the assignment to explore which facilities regarding living, care and wellbeing are important to inhabitants that are 55 years old or older.

At this moment Fieldacademy is writing the report that will contain the answer to the questions that the district of Kralingen-Crooswijk asked so they can successfully develop the assisted living area. Students of the Hogeschool Rotterdam conducted interviews with respondents in the three selected areas. The interviews took place according to the Visual Stimulus Method, developed by Royer and Ree. In collaboration with TNO, the students have tested this method in practice. To be well prepared,  the students attended a workshop that was provided by staff of TNO, so they knew exactly what was important during conducting the interviews. The results of the interviews was gathered by the students and presented to the respondents in two separate meeting which were attended by residents who participated in the study.

Staff members of the Fieldacademy have talked to many professionals who are working in this specific areas and whose work is related to Assisted living areas. They also conducted several interviews with inhabitants to increase the level of information that was gathered. The information from these interviews and the information that was collected by the student of the Hogeschool Rotterdam is now being analyzed and described in the report.

Accessible areas

The municipality of Rotterdam will develop several assisted living areas in the city. Starting point for this development is that specific groups, such as the elderly and people with disabilities, can live independent as possible while maintaining control of their own life. An important issue in this development is the accessibility of these areas. Accessibility in this is broadly defined. It is not merely the physical accessibility of some buildings but also the availability and accessibility of housing, facilities and services in the neighborhood. The central question in this study is to what conditions the neighborhood must meet in order to facilitate elderly and people with disabilities.
Knowledge of the local context is important because each region has specific characteristics. Each district should develop its own strategy depending on the demographic composition, embedding in the urban context, urban structure or the level of facilities.

That is why Fieldacademy is carrying out an comparative study on accessibility in different neighborhoods. Accessibility is broadly defined and investigated through different themes such as housing, health care, welfare and participation.