Grant: Team Grant-Joint call for Res Appl (JCRA) Ageing Res-ERA-AGE2

Active ageing allows "people to realize their potential for physical, social, and mental well-being throughout the life course and to participate in society, while providing them with adequate protection, security and care when they need"(World Health Organization). Most policy focuses on keeping people out of long-term residential care, even though many people live in these places now and will in the future. Little attention has been paid to the ageing labour force in these places or to the fact that residential care is mainly care for women by women. With a view of health that includes mental, physical, emotional, social and spiritual aspects, we seek to identify healthy ageing strategies for long-term residential care that allow both staff and residents to live better, and perhaps longer, more fulfilling lives, potentially saving money by reducing the medical and other care required for residents and staff. Our international project is based on comparative, collaborative, case studies lead by experienced teams. It will offer detailed information on physical, economic, environmental, social, and behavioral conditions that shape and define healthy ageing for residents and staff in specific facilities. It begins by collecting and analyzing existing information and research reports on Canada, the UK, Sweden and Norway to set the context for understanding specific residences. Our main technique involves a new method in this field - rapid site-switching ethnography, designed to capture the rich detail necessary to identify strategies for active, healthy ageing by bringing local and foreign researchers together to study two facilities in each country. They will observe staff and residents, provide the residents with cameras as a way of expressing their views, and interview staff and residents about their experiences, bringing fresh eyes to these sites while ensuring a local perspective.