BU Research Blog

Staying Active and Independent for Longer (SAIL) is an EU funded project which began in 2017. The project aimed to use the concept of social innovation to develop 10 pilots across 4 countries (France, Belgium, The Netherlands and the UK) that would enable older people to be more active. The members of the research team from Bournemouth University (Prof. Ann Hemingway Prof. Adele ladkin and Dr. Holly Crossen-White) have just published a paper in Quality in Ageing and Older Adults on how social innovation can be applied to develop services that support the needs of older people. The paper entitled, The application of social innovation as it relates to older people and the implications for future policymaking: a scoping review presents research evidence into the use of soical innovation in relation to services for older people and identifies exisitng knowledge gaps. A key point to emerge from the scoping review was that although social innovation has the potential to act as a policy driver, to be effective, it is necessary to devise robust strategies to ensure full user-engagement and active involvement of communities.  Furthermore,  any future research into social innovation needs to focus upon the process of delivery as this is an aspect of social innovation that has to date received little attention.