Healing the Generational Divide

The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Social Integration has launched Healing the Generational Divide interim report.  We gave evidence to the inquiry on how Homeshare can bring generations together, such as these housemates with a seven decade age gap.

The report highlights four areas for bridging divides:

• Intergenerational communities: the role of local, grassroots initiatives which unite generations through shared interests such as art, music, politics and conversation, what they can do to be more effective, and how local and central government can help them thrive.

• Intergenerational public services: how intergenerational connection can be embedded throughout care and education, on public transport, and via schemes to help older people stay active in their communities.

• Intergenerational housing and planning: how existing housing can be used to improve intergenerational connection, and how new housing, as well as whole towns and cities, can be designed for all ages.

• Technology and intergenerational connection: the role of technology as both a source of disconnection and loneliness among different age groups and as a potential tool for strengthening intergenerational connections.

It also suggests some interesting initiatives alongside ours such as:

• 1p charge on self-service checkout machines:  technological changes, which reduce human contact, can fund initiatives that support greater social interactions.

• Co-location within care and education: all nurseries, schools and care homes should be encouraged to link up.

• A new flagship national volunteering service for older people.

• Tax break for volunteering within public services.

• ‘Take Your Headphones Off Day’: to promote conversation on public transport

Interesting and no doubt media-hooking ideas. But I think that Homeshare reminds us is that there is no reason for the generations to live separately. This divide is not something which has happened due to human nature, it’s been inadvertently but actively fostered by the way we have organised public services and public spaces around age-specific needs or activities. There’s also an economic element, particularly in middle-class areas where housing has become unaffordable to an entire generation. We need to reverse those divisive policies not to tackle a problem which has occurred naturally, but because our current policies are creating and maintaining the problem.

We will see fewer intergenerational divides when we are able to see people first and foremost as individuals, not as their ages.