AGE’IN aimed at keeping the ageing population independent for longer at their own home or chosen home through a strategy combining house adaptations with the development of a real local ecosystem for the ageing population. 
The project sought to increase both their quality of life and the quality of the environment, such as services, safety, and public spaces.
The project looked forward to bringing about meaningful change by establishing robust and coherent partnerships, integrating house adaptations, digital solutions, and apps. The expected outcome was a shift in policy towards proactively preventing the loss of autonomy among the elderly. AGE’IN aimed to be innovative as to its approach of combining both social activities, a digital platform, communication strategies and living labs in a coherent way to create a real support base. 
AGE’IN focused on housing and connecting it with social aspects and the urban environment. Partners adopted a bottom-up approach and participation from target groups was sought in the development of tools. 

The outputs mainly included demonstration actions and pilots. More specifically, they consisted of demonstration actions to empower those aged 55+ to better adapt their housing to remain independent at home for longer. The project facilitated pilot actions to improve the offer of adapted houses and public spaces as well as tests in living labs to improve current technologies and products. Furthermore, the project developed a joint strategy to detect isolated or "at risk" senior people and identify their weaknesses and specific needs as well as pilot actions focussing on building social networks around social isolated people. Finally, the project published mag'AGIN, inspiring an overview of pilot actions in order to reduce loneliness and improve seniors’ social life. 

Check the “Outputs” section below to download related material and see “Main Achievements” section for further information about the achieved results. 

AGE’IN project partners faced common challenges in terms of ageing, lack of actions towards the loss of autonomy and inappropriate housing conditions. A major bottleneck was the slowness of society in switching from active care to prevention activities. Pooling together resources and sharing knowledge and good practices was crucial to reduce the existing gap between France and the UK on one hand and Belgium and the Netherlands on the other hand, with respect to the share of housing appropriated for elderly.

Cross border cooperation was necessary in the adaption of housing and neighbourhoods. Project partners have all contributed to the publication of the systematic review. They jointly worked on the development of the training of the Housing Enabler. They co-designed the methodology of focus groups. 

When strengthening social links and reducing social isolation, the partnership jointly developed the strategy to detect loneliness with the elderly, created the cross-border podcast and constantly exchanged ideas before the publication of the AGE’IN magazine.

Concerning the housing adaptation pilots, whilst the outputs are accessible at a single location, it was the collaborative cross-border cooperation that made them possible. For example, among the most successful activities carried out by the AGE’IN project, there was the smart kitchen. Such an activity started with the review of appropriate technological components which was undertaken by academic partners in the UK and Belgium, and was later used for the implementation of the actual kitchen by other project partners.

Finally, the communication strategy and plan were defined during various face-to-face and videoconference meetings with all project partners. The communication of the project was a real challenge, especially because of the covid crisis. Indeed, it was important for the project to remain active even during the various lockdown periods. The partners used different communication elements to continue to inform the target audience without moving (e.g.: the virtual visit of HÎPA and the communication on the online activities, ...). All these elements were jointly developed by the AGE’IN project partners.