Citizen Participation for Age-Friendly Communities: A Case Study of Stavanger

The project engages a citizen panel to enhance dialogue between Stavanger's administration, politicians, and seniors, promote age-friendly initiatives, ensuring residents' voices shape local decisions

Background
Stavanger municipality, as the rest of Norway, faces demographic shifts with a growing elderly population, accompanied by increasing expectations and pressure on community services and healthcare. The municipality seeks to become more age-friendly by encouraging citizen participation, especially from the 60-80 age group, to meet needs, leverage place-based knowledge, create good lives locally and meet sustainability goals. Traditional engagement methods are often reactive and reach only "resourceful" groups, necessitating new approaches.
Method
A citizen panel was established, involving 26 participants from diverse districts, amongst others to provide input on Stavanger's action plan for an age-friendly community. The panel addressed: "How can we facilitate good everyday lives for an increasingly elderly population?" The methodology involved five facilitated sessions focusing on key dimensions (planning, participation, housing, transport, community involvement) derived from WHO's framework for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC). Participants were randomly selected from the target group – the first and only “elderly-panel” in Norway so far. Data collection included observations, interviews, and analysis of recommendations, combined with interviews of participants and panel facilitators. The selection process ensures representation across different districts, ethnicity and socio-economic backgrounds.
Results
The citizen panel will provide recommendations for the municipality's action plan, influencing policy development and planning processes related to aging. This method aims to promote active citizenship by empowering participants to shape their community. The research component aims to evaluate the success and value of the citizen panel as a participation method for seniors, assessing its representativeness, ability to generate consensus, impact on policy, and its success as a promoter of active citizenship. The panel will reveal knowledge and understanding of the locals’ most important factors for the elderly community to have a good everyday life.
Conclusion/Main Message
This project uses a citizen panel to improve dialogue between the municipality administration and politicians and older residents, helping Stavanger become more age-friendly. The citizen panel encourages participation among seniors, making their voices heard in local decision-making. The project seeks to uncover priorities for good lives among the elderly, providing a model for other municipalities. The findings will be used to discuss citizenship amongst elderly people and promote more representative and democratic methods.