Statewide Age-Friendly Virtual Fair as a Tactic for Social Change Across the Aging Ecosystem.

Prior research has demonstrated ways in which community events help to establish age-friendly community initiatives and strengthen their impact. We extend these insights by discussing how the design and implementation of a statewide event - the New Jersey Age-Friendly Virtual Fair - exemplifies this practice theory and extends its applicability beyond local community development toward broader state-level age-friendly ecosystems. We describe how events that are deliberately multi-organizational, multi-sectoral, and multi-level can help to further propel the Age-Friendly Movement toward systems change for aging in community.

Responding to Local Needs by Mobilizing Community Assets: Age-Friendly Community Initiatives During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Age-friendly community initiatives (AFCIs) strive to make localities better for long and healthy lives by fostering improvements across social, physical, and service environments. Despite the heightened need for community supports during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, very little research has addressed the work of AFCIs in the context of this crisis. We aimed to develop theory on how AFCI core teams have contributed to community responses during the pandemic, as well as what contexts have influenced the initiatives' ability to contribute. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: As part of a multiyear, community-partnered study on the development of philanthropically supported initiatives in northern New Jersey, we conducted qualitative interviews with 8 AFCI core teams during the winter of 2020-2021. The interviews focused on the leaders' efforts at that time, with probing questions concerning enabling factors for their community responses. We analyzed the data using an inductive coding process encompassing open, axial, and subcoding. RESULTS: The analysis indicated four distinct roles of AFC core groups: good community partner, creator, advocate, and communications broker. We further found that AFC leaders primarily drew on three types of capital-human, social, and tangible-to enact these roles, oftentimes in cumulative ways. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: We interpret our study's findings and their implications by integrating insights from theories of social impact. We further highlight the importance of continued research on community-centered approaches to promote aging in community during times of societal crisis, and otherwise.

Giving, Receiving, and Doing Together: Interorganizational Interactions in Age-Friendly Community Initiatives.

Multi-sectoral collaboration is widely considered essential for age-friendly community change; however, there has been little empirical research to describe the ways in which organizations interact as part of age-friendly community initiatives (AFCIs). We conducted a qualitative descriptive study using data from multiple waves of semi-structured interviews with core teams of eight grant-funded AFCIs in the north-eastern U.S. We employed iterative, inductive coding to systematically describe ways in which AFCI core teams described working with other organizational entities. Findings indicated two overarching themes: (a) helping each other (giving and receiving linking, informational, and instrumental assistance), and (b) doing something together (organizing community events, planning collaborative projects, participating in meetings). We discuss the implications of this characterization for guiding research, evaluation, and policy to optimize AFCI implementation and impact across diverse settings.

Theories of Community Collaboration to Advance Age-Friendly Community Change.

The age-friendly communities movement has grown rapidly in global prominence over the past 2 decades. However, theories to guide multisectoral action toward age-friendly community change have been slower to develop. We demonstrate the value of drawing on theories of community collaboration to inform age-friendly community efforts across engagement, planning, implementation, and measurement. We introduce 3 theories-Asset-Based Community Development, Strategic Doing, and Collective Impact-each with principles and strategies for guiding multisectoral group processes toward long-term and systematic community change. While distinct from each other, these theories collectively suggest the importance of incorporating a more explicit community-building approach within the age-friendly communities movement. We describe the implications of this integrative theory development for bolstering sustainable and comprehensive practices and policies to improve environments for aging across diverse communities.

The Cumulative Effect of Prior Maltreatment on Emotional and Physical Health of Children in Informal Kinship Care.

OBJECTIVE: Millions of children cared for by their grandparents or other kin without a biological parent present are not part of the foster care system. Maltreatment may have precipitated out-of-home care arrangements, but most children in informal kinship care are not being tracked or receiving services. Importantly, the extent of previous child welfare involvement and its association with well-being among this population are not well known. METHODS: Kinship caregivers known to social service and community agencies were recruited for this study. Caregivers who agreed to participate rated the physical and emotional health of children under their care. Maternal mental health and demographic data were collected, and matched records of children were retrieved from the state child welfare database. The nested structure of children within families was addressed using a generalized estimating equation model. RESULTS: The sample included 365 children from 274 families. Only 25% of the children were in private kinship care with no known Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement. An average of 2.37 open CPS cases were observed for those in voluntary kinship care. One out of 4 children scored below the clinical level of emotional health. The number of CPS cases and kin caregiver's parenting stress were inversely associated with child's physical and emotional health. The presence of maternal mental health problem was significantly associated with poor child emotional well-being. CONCLUSION: Many children in informal kinship care experienced multiple episodes of maltreatment. This study's results add further evidence of the cumulative negative effects of child maltreatment on child well-being. Children in informal kinship care are in need of services to mitigate their traumatic experiences.