Policy and strategy recommendations

Participants were asked to validate, legitimise and comment on the analysis results of the report and its conclusions. The presenter went through the conclusions of the report related to the drivers, barriers and challenges of the related AHA policies at national and regional level. This chapter presents only a very limited number of points that the discussion highlighted the most important and relevant.

- Barrier 1: Lack of funding

- Barrier 2: Poor communication about existing funds

- Barrier 3: Mismatch between policy and funding

- Barrier 4: Silos and fragmentation in funding lines

- Barrier 5: Capacity building to enable stakeholders to absorb funds

The economic environment and the lack of funding are considered as major barriers to develop and implement successful AHA policies. But allocating more money would solve all problems in policy-making and implementation. Funding might already be allocated and available but perhaps the communication about these opportunities is poor or the awareness about them is low. It could also be possible that the policy priorities and the funding priorities do not correspond and without funds allocated to the policy priorities, their implementation will suffer and will fail to deliver impact. Government often works in silo mentality and therefore, the funding made available is also in silos, without coherence or synergy between the funding lines. Stakeholders might not have the capacities and the skills to retrieve the available funding. In this case rather skills development than the increase in funding could be a remedy to the issue.

If ageing became an economic or a financial priority rather than a political priority, this might help to ensure continuous and sustainable support to this challenge across the electoral cycles.

The lack of political commitment will constitute a challenge for AHA in the future. The central governments should support the efforts that endeavour to address the ageing issues.

The most efficient measure needed would be better cooperation between all types of stakeholders to act against the fragmentation between the policies.

- Regions 1: Subnational level managing ageing policies

- Regions 2: Regions in intergovernmental programmes

- Regions 3: Empowerment of citizens and professionals

Below the European, sub-national level might be more appropriate to deal with ageing. By sub-national we mean equally regional and local as in some of the countries the local level is much stronger. It could increase efficiency in some cases if regions were invited to initiatives, programmes where usually the Member States should participate. Intergovernmental joint programmes could accept regions as full and legitimate members of the programme if the regions are more front runners than the national government.

Empowering the regions can be one step but it is crucial to empower citizens and professionals as well in order to understand and accept technologies, for instance. First of all, the professionals should be built the right skills and then they can “train” the citizens to become “ageing literate”.

This chapter describes the results of the four working groups that the participants were divided into during the expert workshop.

- Reference Sites 1: Ecosystem of stakeholders for the Reference Site status

- Reference Sites 2: Involving the civil society and the young

- Reference Sites 3: Coordination and ownership of Directorate Generals

- Reference Sites 4: Recognition of the regions

Preparing a Reference Site application requires more than a simple partnership. It needs a local ecosystem of the stakeholders. Civil society and citizens should be involved right from the beginning and a strong political commitment should accompany the initiative. It is particularly important to obtain the young generation’s support to build the future strategy on them. The ecosystem should be able to collectively raise the voice of AHA issues. The coordination and ownership from the European Commission’s relevant Directorate Generals (DG) is crucial to ensure a balanced development and guidance from this level.

The EC support could mean the recognition of the strong role of the regions and the recognition of the Reference Site status in the project applications for EU funding as a guarantee label.

Communicating the benefits of being a Reference Site is very important because that can attract more applications and can convince other regions to take steps. Obtaining the Reference Site status can help to launch new services, and develop new start-ups.

- Participation 1: Widening vs deepening

- Participation 2: Engagement of politicians

- Participation 3: Valorisation of SMEs

- Participation 4: Enhanced technology use

The question still remains open if the EIP on AHA wants to widen its membership at all. Or it should only deepen the participation of the current members and increase the level of their engagement, like politicians and adapting the language that would be efficient to engage them.

It could be attractive for the SMEs if some start-ups could be part of a high-level expert group of the EIP at steering level to better exploit on their experience and give them visibility. It could be convincing and motivating for the other SMEs.

Greater use of technology, webinars, distant meetings and videos could increase the efficiency of communication and could enhance the cooperation. It could also multiply the meetings and the exchange of knowledge between the partners. The ICT communication tools could facilitate the creation of a virtual online knowledge-exchange platform.

- Investment 1: New business models

- Investment 2: Mixture of funding

- Investment 3: Ageing is an opportunity

The current amounts in healthcare, pension and insurance are huge. The introduction of new forms of public investments and new business models could ensure more efficiency thereof. It could also attract further private investments.

As the prices of healthcare products and services, if they were only offered by private companies without public intervention, would be quite high. Therefore, a mixture of funding is needed.

Users and clients can drive innovation by expressing their needs. The elderly are not only users of services and not only consumers but they have important assets and wealth, like pension schemes, insurances, house that could be used in a creative way. The elderly can become successful entrepreneur as well and the elderly are more willing to buy social services from their peers than from other providers. Ageing is an opportunity.

- Sustainability 1: Suggested scaling-up model

- Sustainability 2: Use of quantitative and qualitative indicators for assessment

- Sustainability 3: Communicating the benefits of the EIPonAHA

The suggested model to scale-up is first consult the Good Practice Repository, select the Good Practice by criteria and organize a meeting then a study trip to the site and scale up the good practice.

A purely quantitative indicator (the number of regions engaged in innovation) cannot be enough to evaluate the efficiency of the EIP. Other indicators, like economic investment from the local and the global level should also be taken into consideration.

The EIP is considered as a highly useful one-stop shop for innovation in AHA. It would be beneficial for the EIP to identifying “champions” who could verbalise, showcase and explain in a pragmatic way what the EIP has offered them and has achieved in their eyes.

The discussions resulted in the following conclusions categorised around three key issues: governance, engagement/commitment and funding. These categories are proposed by the authors of this report. Organising these conclusions in a structured way serves the bases for the draft recommendations.

1) Faster developing regions could pass by the national level and join up to European initiatives if the Member State cannot commit.

2) Becoming a Reference Site requires building a regional ecosystem. Being a Reference Site can create numerous economic opportunities.

3) The wider and greater use of ICT technologies will be beneficial for the EIPonAHA members.

4) For assessing the achievements of the EIP, a complex set of quantitative and qualitative indicators should be selected.

5) The Action Groups, the Reference Sites and the EIP Community would need further support from the European Commission. The EIP is a useful one-stop shop for innovation in AHA.

1) The engagement of the citizens is key to ensure the sustainability of the priorities and for their engagement and commitment.

2) Besides policies, the most efficient measure needed would be better cooperation between all types of stakeholders.

3) The EIP needs to deepen the engagement and the commitment of the existing partners .

1) Available funding should be better communicated, the ways of applications should be clearer and the staff who are dealing with them should be better trained. Funding and policy priorities should be better aligned.

2) Public and private funding should equally support AHA solutions.

3) Ageing should be also seen as an economic opportunity.