See, Click, Fix is an interesting societal experiment that connects citizens to each other and city hall to get things fixed.
Through their platform, anyone can report and track non-emergency issues anywhere in the world via the internet. In the process this empowers citizens, community groups, media organizations and governments to take care of and improve their neighborhoods. They maintain that citizens who take the time to report even minor issues and see them fixed are likely to get more engaged in their local communities.
Citizens report issues on the go, and set up watch areas to monitor their block. For example,
- Neighborhood groups and advocates follow reports of blocked bike lanes, broken windows or idling vehicles.
- Governments watch for potholes and cracked sidewalks, while a police captain can monitor crime issues being reported within his/her precinct.
- Media outlets and local bloggers are the first to know when issues "pop up" in their areas.
In short, you fix a problem by publicly broadcasting the issue to the appropriate parties for resolution, working collectively to raise the profile of key concerns, or by taking direct action.
So why not employ this to the benefit of our elders?
There is an elder care initiative called Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities' (NORC). It is a demographic term to describe neighborhoods or buildings in which a large segment of the residents are older adults. In general, they are not purpose-built senior housing or retirement communities and were neither designed nor intended to meet the particular health and social services needs and wants of the elderly. Most commonly, they are places where community residents have either aged in place or are the result of significant migrations of older adults into the same neighborhoods, where they intend to spend the rest of their lives.
NORCs provide a singular opportunity to deliver targeted health and supportive services cost-effectively; increase service availability; organize cooperative health promotion, crises prevention, and community improvement initiatives; and develop new human, financial, and neighborhood resources for the benefit of older residents.
In other words in these NORCs people and communities look out for each other and the elderly.
But this type of aging in place initiative is not everywhere. In fact it is very new and experimental.
So what if there was a See, Click, Fix for our elderly everywhere else?
Someone observes Mrs. Jones shut-in with no one attending to her needs. That person uses the tools to report this to all interested parties and agencies that care about the elderly. One or more respond. Maybe one individual takes her to the doctors. Another does her grocery shopping. An agency finds out about it her before she falls through the cracks and avails her of various senior services.
We all have Mrs. Jones in our neighborhoods. We don't all know her circumstance. We may presume her needs are taken care of.
See, Click, Fix - how can we adapt this for our elders?
Learn more ~ or join the conversation!
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