Supporting models of care that address the social needs of older adults as they age

This project investigated models of care that focused on the social needs of older adults as they age. The project used foresight methodology to perform a horizon scan, aggregating a variety of existing or emerging models to serve as a resource to improve awareness for these models of care. Semi-structured interviews with older adults, friends and family of older adults, service providers, and experts led to seven emergent themes. Social network resilience emerged as a major theme for supporting social needs of older adults. Three design qualities for supporting resilience were proposed. Models of care from the horizon scan were evaluated based on these three qualities and model strengths were combined with strengths from parallel challenges, to create a design tool. The design tool synthesizes a set of service provider guidelines for building social network resilience