Category Archives: Laakdal

Cross-border Learning: Belgian and UK partners exchange experiences

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In early November, SIG‘s HAIRE team were delighted to welcome our Belgian partners Sofie Schepers and Katrien Serroyen who were visiting Cornwall from Laakdal. After a weekend of cultural and historical activities – taking in Guy Fawkes’ night and a tour of Falmouth’s Tudor castle, Pendennis – they spent a day exchanging experiences with Feock (one of our pilot sites) before travelling to East Sussex pilot sites and meeting our partners at Rother Voluntary Action and East Sussex County Council.

The East Sussex team were keen to give as broad a picture as possible of their locality and took our Belgian colleagues on a tour that took in the quaint beauty of Rye (cobbled streets and the fifteenth century Mermaid Inn), Tilling Green social housing estate, new housing in Winchelsea, and a relatively new community hub – The Hub on the Hill – which runs many classes and services for the community with an emphasis on older residents.

Katrien and Sofie are smiling, standing in front of Pendennis Castle in Falmouth, Cornwall

Katrien and Sofie at Pendennis Castle, Falmouth, Cornwall

The cultural exhange and sharing is important for Interreg2Seas funded projects. They promote cooperation between regions and countries to enhance economic and social development in our own countries and across borders. Our HAIRE 2Seas partners share the common challenge of supporting people to age well in rural areas, where loneliness and isolation and mobility problems are just some of the themes being tackled. Having had very few opportunities to meet due to restrictions brought about by the Covid pandemic, it was inspiring to share experiences and perspectives from nearly three years of HAIRE action and learning in our respective locations.

The HAIRE teams from East Sussex and Belgium are looking over a vista of housing and fields near Rye

Steve, Sue and Naomi from East Sussex taking the Belgians on a tour of their locality

At the initial meeting in Devoran, the village in Feock parish where the council offices are located, the difference between locations felt quite stark to our Belgian colleagues: Laakdal is a municipality with a population of around 16,000, whereas the population in Feock Parish numbers around 3,700. The larger East Sussex pilot sites felt more familar to the Belgian team. Yet one of the most difficult challenges for all locations has been reaching members of the community who may be in need, or may benefit from HAIRE’s activities, but who are almost “hidden.”

The extended HAIRE team pictured in the "warm space" at Feock parish council

The extended HAIRE team pictured in a community space at Feock parish council

However, as a result of the emphasis the HAIRE toolkit placed on listening to residents, the needs of the older population as a whole can be better taken into account. Now that HAIRE and its ethos of co-creation and listening is familiar to each department and area of responsibility, the views, opinions, needs and ideas of residents are being heard, and this has led to subtle changes in the system. Different methods to listen and co-create products and services have been introduced in all of our pilot sites to ensure their older residents are included in important decisions.

Feock now has an information and help line, originating out of the Covid pandemic, but which has become a staple of the parish. A legacy of HAIRE is that parish-based decisions take into account any impact on the older population in a way that they may not have been so obviously before. It is the same in Laakdal: the planning department, for example, is aware of the way its decisions impact the elderly – and they are now prepared to consult the HAIRE team for information about how they might best move forward with their works.

East Sussex partners have done an excellent job by instigating local and national design innovations after working with the RSA, the royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce (“committed to a world that is resilient, rebalanced and regenerative, where everyone can fulfil their potential.”) Their Hastings and Rother Ageing Network meets monthly to network with local organisations, groups and individuals with a focus on how they can work together to make Rother and Hastings healthy and supportive places to grow older in.

From a longer term, strategic standpoint, Feock has made the decision to work with partners to develop a formal age-friendly community as our partners in East Sussex have done. The Guided Conversations in pilot sites illustrated the multiple dimensions of ageing well, which prompted the need for a holistic system response, and the UK arm of the World Health Organisation’s Age Friendly Communities programme is well aligned with the aims of the HAIRE project.

As Katrien and Sofie pointed out, the pilot site comparisons were useful, showing commonalities and differences and making them reflect on what went well in their own communities – and how “HAIRE thinking” could be built into longer term planning.

“Feock felt very isolated in comparison to Laakdal. The lack of public transport, the lack of shops, the very rural environment, the huge amount of second homes … I would think that building the community would be very difficult. Yet they succeed to organise meetings where 80 people attend and they make the most of small things (the red phone booths made into small libraries). Well done Feock! Rye felt more like Laakdal. What stood out was that both pilot sites are much more in contact with the church. In Belgium the church doesn’t organise much and in our pilot site the church isn’t involved. What was also different is the health part. I think that in the UK the health partners and health “input” is bigger than in Belgium. In Laakdal it’s more community building and well being than health. What I think both pilot sites did very well is thinking about life after HAIRE right from the beginning of the project. I believe that that will make it possible to continue and embed HAIRE better.”

The Belgian team are pictured with people from Feock and the University of Exeter - and the HAIRE mascot, a Corgi called Treacle

The Belgian team with Feock and the University of Exeter – and the HAIRE mascot, Treacle

Kate’s Grand Tour Part 3: Training in Adjacent Areas

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One of the objectives of our project is to extend the use of the HAIRE toolkit beyond the borders of our pilot areas. Kate’s visit to Laakdal (one of our pilot sites) included training new volunteers in the village of Bergom in the neighbouring municipality of Herselt. This region is a good example of how the toolkit can be customised to suit the community it is used in. Assisted dying is legal in Belgium, and the toolkit needed to include training volunteers in conversations about end of life. This is the third of four short blogs about Kate’s visit to Belgium in April, 2022.

On my second full day in Belgium, myself and the local project team (Katien, Sophie and Severine) train Jill Van der Auwera from the neighbouring municipality of Herselt, which comprises the villages of Herselt proper, Ramsel, Blauberg, Bergom and Varenwinkel. The sat nav takes me to an empty field about 5k from our meeting point. Thank goodness for Google Maps.  

We meet in a community hall in a small village surrounded by farmland and forests. This area feels more remote than Vorst, with more small, scattered settlements. The team in Laakdal – including the volunteers – will help to train professionals and volunteers in Herselt in the next few weeks. The issues that face their older community – especially the rising cost of living – are very familiar. We incorporate the insights from Laakdal’s volunteers into the session, which really helps with the practical aspects of applying the HAIRE toolkit elsewhere. After our session, we walk through the quiet, neat village to the magnificent Catholic Church with its lofty, modern interior and high, vaulted wooden ceiling.  In the evening, I drive to Bergom to attend the training of volunteers in conversations about end of life. This is a particular focus for Herselt and an issue for which they have adapted their Guided Conversations. Although the training is in Flemish, I keep up with the slides by putting a few key phrases from each into Google Translate. The training covers why and how we should talk about and prepare for the end of life along with useful case studies. Assisted dying is legal in Belgium, so some of the training is about that. A new model of palliative care is presented which introduces elements of palliative care alongside continuing treatment in a more gradual way. This breaks down the cure/care dualism in which only when the search for a cure ends does palliative care begins. Instead, this model seeks to open up the conversation about the journey towards the end of life more gradually and in a supportive and empathic way. It is a moving and very productive session.

 

Kate’s Grand Tour, Part 2 of 4: Arriving in Laakdal, Belgium

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Professor Catherine (Kate) Leyshon, our Principal Investigator, was able to travel for the first time since our project launch in early 2020. She referred to her trip as the “Grand Tour”! We asked her to write about her journey to East Sussex and subsequent visit to Laakdal in Belgium, and give us a writerly flavour of what those places look and feel like, since we’ve been unable to visit. Here’s part two: her first glimpse of Laakdal. More to follow!

I arrive on the Eurostar in Brussels and pick up a hire car for the drive to Diest, the town where I am staying about 25 minutes away from the municipality of Laakdal, in the province of Antwerp. The municipality comprises the towns of Eindhout, Veerle, Vorst, Varendonk and Vorst-Meerlaar, all of which are involved with HAIRE. Diest is a pretty, well-kept town with narrow cobbled streets and new buildings tastefully blended into its historic town-centre. I take a walk up through a leafy park and back through the town square, lined with canopied restaurants where diners are enjoying the warm spring evening.

The next day, I drive to Vorst in Laakdal. Initially my car’s sat nav wants to take me to Vorst near Brussels but I realise this is in completely the wrong direction! I drive out of Diest and I’m quickly into the flat, farmed landscape of this part of Belgium. The road is straight and quiet. As I reach Vorst, I notice how quiet and tidy it is. We are meeting in the fantastic Gemeentehuis. Recently constructed and serving the whole municipality, it contains the library, a post office, meeting rooms, the only bank machine in town and some local council functions.

I meet four volunteers who have some fascinating insights into their experience of using the HAIRE toolkit. They are very generous with their knowledge, and – with a retired Alderman amongst their number – we have an in-depth discussion about new models of service design and delivery. The issues in this part of rural Belgium are familiar across the project: people growing older sometimes become less confident and stop going out as much. They become isolated and suffer some consequences to their overall wellbeing. The Guided Conversation has helped to reconnect them to the community. The partners are especially looking forward to taking ownership of a new minibus; transport here is very limited – it’s no surprise that getting around is a problem in all our pilot sites.

HAIRE is about “a good old age”: project progress in Laakdal

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Thanks to our colleagues in Laakdal for sending us a news article which was published after a large stakeholder event discussing the co-creation and prioritisation of local social innovations. Below is a translation into English of the article by Annelies Frederickx published on Wednesday 20th October, 2021. You can read the original article at source here.

The seniors of Laakdal debate four themes: mobility, leisure, caring for tomorrow and communication — © AF

Laakdal is the first municipality to undertake the European participation project HAIRE.

HAIRE’s pilot site in Laakdal involves a partnership between the local government and Welzijnszorg Kempen, an organisation specialising in the health and wellbeing of the most vulnerable in society, including older people. In Laakdal, 28% of the population is senior, so the municipality is ideally suited to explore the possibilities of co-creation with older people. There is also interest from adjacent areas, Mol and Herselt, in working with HAIRE.

Katrien Serroyen of Welzijnszone Kempen takes an active part in the debate. — © AF

The first part of the started in September 2020 with a neighbourhood analysis (a mapping of resources with residents in the neighbourhood; see this earlier blog post for an overview of what this entailed in Feock, UK, one of our other pilot sites.) Volunteers were then recruited to carry out “Guided Conversations.” Sixteen volunteers set out from the community to interview 71 older people. The respondents were 60, 70, 80 and 90 years old and they lived all over Laakdal. The Guided Conversations contain place- and person-related questions, as well as a section on personal empowerment. The results yielded a long list of more than a hundred action points. In consultation with the municipal council, the project team has filtered four priorities from this: mobility, leisure, care for tomorrow (dementia and early care planning) and communication. The older people surveyed all expressed the wish to rename the HAIRE project ‘A good old age in Laakdal’, as the English acronym did not resonate as strongly.

Sofie Schepers is an expert community-oriented care provider in Laakdal. — © AF

During the kick-off in the local meeting centre, some thirty people over sixty set to work on the four priority themes. In each domain, they identified the most important difficulties and looked for possible solutions. Rosa Wilms took an active part in the debate as she has been involved from the start: “When I read the call in the municipal information sheet, I immediately applied to be a volunteer”, Rosa Wilms reveals. “I was alone and this seemed to be an ideal pastime for me. I like to chat and through the project I was also able to make new contacts. I had a total of ten conversations, four online and six at home. They were all intense but wonderful conversations.”

Rosa Wilms has been involved in every phase of the project. — © AF

“My chats showed that older people in Laakdal struggle with a lack of respect from neighbours, young people and from traffic”, Rosa Wilms adds. “Of course there’s not much a municipal council can do about that; we all have to work on that together. I completely agree with the four chosen themes. Choices must of course be made and it seems realistic to me that the municipal council can achieve things in those four domains. The most important thing for me, however, is that we are being listened to.”

Difficult points to resolve or improve were noted for each theme. — © AF

Sofie Schepers, who leads the project for the municipal government, had good news for the participants. “The municipality is buying a van and it will be available to all older people in Laakdal. It can be used to provide transport to activities in all boroughs and we are also looking at the possibility of, for example, providing transport to the local market. The aim to provide ‘A good old age in Laakdal’ has only just started, but we are well on our way.”

What’s in a Place?

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This month we are showcasing our place illustrations, which will be used during Guided Conversations in individual pilot sites during the research…

Depiction of the Parish of Feock, Cornwall, UK

Parish of Feock, Cornwall (UK)

A cow peers over a wooden picket fence close to a Celtic cross, one of the waymarkers in Cornwall that still stands on ancient rights of way. A ship drifts in the sky, which is punctuated with trees and cliffs, farm buildings and a Spar shop. A lone dog walker stands on the quayside, looking out across the water towards the village hall. A village signpost nudges a fairylike stone tower that sits on the edge of a National Trust garden. The Docks, an icon of Falmouth’s modern shipping industry, melds past and present, overlooking the third deepest natural harbour in the world…or is it? Maybe, to you, it’s the ferry chugging across the river; perhaps the fairytale tower brings to mind your local church and community, or the dog walker is actually not on a quayside at all, but in your local park (and just out of sight is the dog walking group you have been longing to join).

The images have all been created to bring to mind local elements in each of our project pilot sites. This image was designed for participants living in the Parish of Feock in Cornwall, which spans several villages. Some depictions, such as specific landmarks, are unmistakable; others are more malleable – in fact, the story changes depending on who is doing the viewing. That’s exactly what we want. These images are able to elicit unique responses that are beyond top of mind thoughts and feelings as participants are asked what it’s like to live in their community. They may trigger ideas and experiences that give a deeper insight into what life is like in the community in which they live – and what might be changed or added to make it better for them as they age.

Image depicting Le Nord

Le Nord (France)

As one resident puts it: “The days of “grey” skies has arrived in the Hauts-de-France region. It may be a bit “challenging” sometimes but it is part of the cycle of nature. And, it’s a beautiful region, especially in the spring…” In this image are the ubiquitous Tabac and La Poste, familiar signage to all inhabitants, with some hints to urban life, such as the Merville town hall and the station at Hazebrouck. The more rural traditions are also visible: the dresses of Flanders, for example, which are well known, and the sight of a Bailleul windmill in the distance, a feature of countryside walks.

Depiction of East Sussex, UK

East Sussex (UK)

Historic landmarks that will be familiar to residents are here: a walker crosses the moat to visit Bodiam Castle; a street sign for Playden, a village first recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book, is at the centre; transport links are evident: the bus and the train station, with links into London, suggest its position out of the city. There is evidence of the water: a playground near Camber Sands, a famous stretch of beach, is alluded to – perhaps an opportunity here to recall trips with children and grandchildren. The oast houses are a familiar sight on the horizon.

Depiction of Laakdal, Belgium

Laakdal (Belgium)

There are four small parishes conjured up in this image: Eindhout, Veerle, Groot-Vorst and Klein Vorst in the municipality of Laakdal, Flanders. Laakdal was named after the valley (dal) of the river Laak. Key landmarks include the old town hall, in the upper left, in Eindhout; the water tower (bottom right) in Veerle; dotted about the image are figurines from the garden of a building housing adults with disabilities. A man leans against a tractor, similar to those found in Groot-Vorst.

Depiction of Goes, Zeeland, in the Netherlands

Goes, Zeeland (The Netherlands)

Goes is a city within the rural municipality, criss-crossed with waterways; you can see a typical boat, train and of course, someone riding their bicycle – in this case, commuting. There is distinctive street art on the sides of buildings, evidence of the new merging with the historic architecture. Many of the graffiti murals include geese as a symbol of the area (Goes is pronounced almost like goose or “ghoosh”, with a distinctively soft ‘g’.) Two towers are included as points of reference; the water tower south of Goes, and the TV tower in the North.

Depiction of Poperinge, Belgium

Poperinge (Belgium)

Last, but not least, residents will recognise the statue of Warme William, the local mascot, seated on a park bench in the town of Poperinge (he is usually blue). He is a symbol of community connection and resilience. Other familiar features of the town include the town hall and the library, (Letterbeek). There are public art installations in the local area; a monument to the Paardenmarkt, the old horse market, is alluded to in the bottom right of the image. The rural life surrounding the town is depicted by the tractor and foliage at the top of the image, and the Vleterbeek is a waterway, with trails along streams and grassy landscapes.

We worked with design company MAP Digital to create unique stimulus materials for each location. The images are supplementary tools in our Guided Conversations to help explore people’s experiences, needs and desires for healthy ageing. The response from participants will help shape the final toolkit (including visual designs) which is due for completion in March 2022.