Participation of Older People

One of the innovative aspects of the Employment Compact was the high significance of participative processes. The Employment Compact in Göttingen assumed that many resources of older people lie idle. According this hypothesis, the perspective of the people concerned have been more strongly regarded in the design of regional employment promotion schemes in general and of the Employment Compact itself in specific. In the Employment Compact, new forms of participation have been designed and tested with the aim to optimise employment policies for the older active population and to support them in their search for perspectives. The field of "Participation of Older People" served as a strategy of empowerment by integrating actors in the development of new ideas and in the optimising of other elements of the Employment Compact.

The field "Participation" did strive for the following goals:

• adjustment of employment policy for older people in the region
• development and testing of a participation model for employment policy
• Elaboration of recommendations for the design of regional employment policy for older people - interregional
• quality management for activities of the Employment Compact

These goals have been pursued by:

• survey of the status quo: older people in measures of employment policy (expert interviews, synthesis of statistics and annual reports)
• participation of older unemployed and employees in the design of measures of employment policy (in workshops, individual and group interviews with unemployed and experts)
• interviews with participants of current projects of the Employment Compact for Older People with the goal to 1. optimise services during the course of the projects and 2. persistently implement the services
• Creation and support of a on-going workshop (Round Table) with actors of the local labour market policy and various senior citizen organisations in order to reflect on the results of the participatory survey. Focus will be the regional design of policies and the conception of recommendations for "Regional Employment Policy for Older People".

The genuine participation and guiding function of the thoughts of the affected was supported by the high priority that this part of the project had for all participating organisations and the co-ordinators as well as the integration of organisations of the affected, the transfer of the results through reports in the central boards and the close association with the co-ordinators.

Contact: Nils Pagels