Senior Citizens Promotion Plan Oberhausen / Seniorenförderplan

Socio-demographic change will noticeably alter Oberhausen's urban society: it will become older, fewer and more colorful. This is accompanied by a variety of challenges for the municipal policy for senior citizens, which require a strategic control and further development of previous approaches. In addition, in view of limited financial resources, the feasibility and expected impact of political measures must be reflected upon in order to noticeably improve the quality of life of seniors locally. Against this background, the city of Oberhausen has commissioned the Institute for Work and Technology to develop a concept for a senior citizens' promotion plan.

Integrated municipal support for seniors, which aims to achieve a noticeable and measurable improvement in the quality of life of seniors, must be geared to the living environment and the needs of seniors in the individual social areas. The city of Oberhausen has done extensive preliminary work for this purpose, in which social developments in the city and the living situations of seniors were described and central fields of action were named, which offer important points of reference for the content of the plan for the promotion of seniors.
Against this background, the development of a concept for a plan for the promotion of seniors poses various challenges: On the one hand, the content review, concretization and prioritization of contents and fields of action. On the other hand, the identification and description of concrete possibilities for action and starting points as well as responsible actors and possible financing and organizational models. And thirdly, the question of impact measurement and verification of target achievement in complex multicausal contexts (monitoring).

The methodological approach is based on document/literature/internet research as well as on quantitative and qualitative methods. In a first step, legal obligations and principles relevant for the municipality are summarized concisely. In a further research, general development trends and individual practical examples of the selected fields of action of municipal senior citizen promotion are mapped. Based on further research, qualitative interviews and focus groups and a quantitative secondary analysis, the status quo in the selected fields of action of Oberhausen's promotion of seniors is determined and analyzed. First, previous activities are analyzed and the target groups and relevant actors are identified and described. This is followed by an evaluation of the status quo of previous municipal strategies and measures (good solutions and open challenges). On the basis of this preliminary work, a scenario for the future promotion of seniors in Oberhausen is to be developed, which prioritizes fields of action and names concrete measures and responsible actors. In addition - for each field of action - a detailed description of the effect of the measures with regard to quality of life, possible financing and organization as well as costs (incl. follow-up costs) and feasibility along a project will be described. The results will be recorded in writing in a document entitled "Promotion of seniors in Oberhausen".