Homes for Healthy Ageing Open Call Webinar

£150,000 funding for UK local authorities, housing providers, developers and academia to test healthy ageing innovations.

Are you a local authority, housing association or asset manager with an interest in delivering better outcomes for people in the homes or places that you manage? Are you a housing developer or placemaker seeking to explore healthier outcomes for older people within their communities and neighbourhoods? Are you a care provider looking to pilot new models of care for people in their homes?

Connected Places Catapult’s ‘Homes for Healthy Ageing’ programme is launching an open call for location partners for its 2022 testbeds on 24 January 2022. The team are looking for three location partners to test and demonstrate innovative solutions to some of the UK’s most pressing healthy ageing challenges in a testbed environment.

Location partners – who might be an individual organisation or a consortium – can apply for up to £50,000 to test their solutions and will work closely with the Connected Places Catapult to co-design their testbeds around a healthy ageing challenge they are facing at a local level.

Interested in applying?

If you are interested in applying to become a location partner, join Connected Places Catapult for a webinar on 24 January 2022 from 14:00 – 15:30 to learn about the benefits of hosting a testbed, the open call process, challenge themes, and key dates. The current two testbed partners, based in Sunderland and Northern Ireland, will also share learnings from their experience of the first open call and offer tips on what applicants can expect in the second round.   

What is a testbed?

A testbed is an approach that removes barriers to testing by giving UK SMEs and innovators access to user groups and local environments so they can develop, test and showcase new or existing products and services without the usual risks. Testbeds play a vital role in helping assess the viability, impact and potential for scale of innovations.

A testbed in this programme could include recruiting a minimum of 10 participants to use and test new solutions in their homes to overcome a particular challenge. It could be utilising an area of public realm to trial solutions to improve activity and active travel. It could be establishing a community hub in an empty shop front to co-create solutions and test new services. It could be equipping carers with new technologies or services to test how well it can support their work. Or it could be something else.

What challenges will our testbeds address?

Your innovative solution must focus on one of the following challenge themes:

• Challenge 1 – Home: Domestic spaces where people live, whether owner-occupied or rented, including shared spaces for gatherings and activities. 

Challenge: The functionality of the home to support independent living in old age 

• Challenge 2 – Place:  Situating the home in the wider context of the neighbourhood, including the urban realm, access to local amenities and transport connectivity. 

Challenge: Places to support active ageing and easy access to amenities

• Challenge 3 – Care:  Care provision can happen in the home, but new models of care could look at the wider amenities, connections and environment beyond the home. 

Challenge: Innovation to support care provision 

The deadline for applications is 18 February 2022. To apply or to learn more about the programme, visit https://cp.catapult.org.uk/opportunity/homes-for-healthy-ageing-testbed-open-call/ 

The Homes for Healthy Ageing Programme

Connected Places Catapult’s ‘Homes for Healthy Ageing’ programme explores how our homes and communities can help people live healthier and more independent lives for longer.

To achieve this, Connected Places Catapult is delivering five testbeds across the UK with location partners to co-design a testbed around a healthy ageing challenge they are facing at a local level.

In its second year, the programme has selected its first two testbed partners. Sunderland City Council and a Northern Ireland Consortium led by Ulster University are working to overcome local challenges related to cold and damp homes and social isolation and loneliness.

The programme hopes to encourage the built environment industry to integrate healthy ageing interventions into their design thinking and business models through greater collaboration between housing and healthy ageing decision makers, innovators, researchers and designers.