Step 1: Assess your age-friendliness

Identifying how age-friendly your community is will allow you to develop a baseline for action. It will also help you think of ways to become more age-friendly and work out what problems need solving.

Quick and easy assessment

Use our tools to assess your age-friendliness and readiness to start planning.

If you’re a town, city or local government area, use the 8 domains assessment checklist. It will enable you to prioritise solutions for any problem areas.

If you’re a business, use the Business self-assessment tool to assess your business.

These assessment tools will help you to understand more about what factors you need to consider to improve your age-friendliness.

The Vancouver Protocol provides in-depth practical guidance about undertaking an age-friendly assessment especially about community and stakeholder engagement. The consultation processes described include focus groups and workshops.

There are many other assessment tools you can use depending on your needs. If you’re a local or state government agency, these include:

Age-friendly Neighbourhoods Guidelines and Toolkit for Local Government from South Australia provides an example of a comprehensive, regulatory-focused assessment tool.
Age-friendly Cleveland Assessment details the process the City of Cleveland, Ohio used to conduct surveys, online engagement and focus groups with more than 1000 older people.

While doing your assessment, you could also start to think about your community, understanding your stakeholders and how to engage with them.