Wellbeing plan sees pensioners walk twice as far as average Briton

Inspired Villages has joined forces with three high profile wellness organisations to boost the health and wellbeing of the Inspired community.

The national retirement living operator is working with ukactive, digital wellness experts, hero and Oomph! to dramatically improve the physical, social and mental wellbeing of its residents around the UK. The recently launched initiative offers a groundbreaking holistic wellbeing programme based on what residents want, and has already seen the residents of one Inspired village clock up more than 7 million steps in the space of just six weeks.

During the initial pilot period, 30 residents of a later living village, in Exeter, Devon, have clocked up an average of 8,109 steps a day – that’s more than double that of the average Briton, which stands at 3,000-4,000 steps a day.* Together they achieved a combined distance of over 3,500 miles – that’s the equivalent of walking to Torronto.

As part of the pilot scheme at Millbrook Village, Inspired has appointed Leah Jackson as a ‘Wellbeing Navigator’. Leah’s role involves inspiring and engaging the village residents to be more physically active and to connect them with employees who can support them.
Nigel and Pauline Epps are among Millbrook’s residents who have been wearing Fitbits as part of the scheme.

Nigel said: “The initiative has transformed our approach to mobility and subsequently improved our quality of life. We’ve both averaged more than 10,000 steps a day.”

Fellow Millbrook residents Veronica and George Pert have also benefited.

Veronica said: “Thanks to this great scheme introduced by Inspired Villages, there’s no doubt we’re doing more exercise because we’re being measured and can compete against each other, which is a huge driver and the hero platform meant we could compete and compare – motivating us to do more.”

Jamie Bunce, Director of Inspired Villages, said: “Health and wellbeing are embedded in our culture, which is why we’re committed to helping our residents to live happy, healthy and active lives. It’s wonderful to see that this latest initiative has improved the quality of their lives.”

A total of £7.67 billion of NHS and healthcare savings could be achieved if one third of inactive over-55s were supported to be physically active over the next 10 years, according to a report by ukactive.**

Meanwhile, the importance of older people maintaining meaningful engagement with the world around them has been highlighted by Age UK’s ‘Index of Wellbeing in Later Life’.***

The Index shows this engagement could be through social, creative or physical activity, or through employment or belonging to a community group.

Prior to the launch of this initiative, hero carried out a digital ‘wellness survey’ of Inspired Villages’ residents to understand the needs, wants and issues facing the community.

The Inspired Villages initiative aims to use physical activity to improve the overall quality of life for residents by helping to reduce loneliness and isolation too, which are recognised by the government as growing challenges.

Joe Gaunt, hero’s Founder and CEO commented on this project: “It’s great to see Inspired Villages taking the lead and proactively managing wellness in this innovative way. Our role has been to encourage and educate residents in a bid to proactively manage all aspects of health and wellness. We’ve also provided support to the busy schedule of community events such as nutrition-led cookery classes and group fitness sessions. It’s an incredibly exciting project and the results really do speak for themselves. Using the hero platform enabled this trial to be about more than just activity but also promoting connected communities, enhancing wellness and mindfulness.”

Not-for-profit health body ukactive is providing independent research and evaluation to demonstrate how the trial influences changes in the health and wellbeing of the Inspired residents over the course of a year. CEO of ukactive, Steven Ward, said: “Increasing our daily physical activity at any stage of life can have a huge impact on our health and happiness. This is an incredibly exciting collaboration with Inspired Villages and could help to change the way we look at later life.”

Oomph!, the UK’s leading wellbeing business for older adults, will also be supporting the scheme by providing exercise classes, creative activities and days out for Inspired Villages’ residents.
In partnership with Legal & General, Inspired Villages owns and operates seven later living villages around the UK – in Hampshire, Devon, West Sussex, Kent, Warwickshire and Cheshire – with more on the way. Find out more at: www.inspiredvillages.co.uk

ENDS

For further information about Inspired Villages Group, please contact Lauren at LUYA on: 01244 560006 or email: lauren@luya.co.uk

*Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33154510
**Source: https://www.ukactive.com/reports/reimagining-ageing/
***Source: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/globalassets/age-uk/documents/repor...

Inspired Villages
https://www.inspiredvillages.co.uk/
Inspired Villages Group is a best in class operator and developer of later living accommodation. Creating safe, secure, social and comfortable village environments in which residents can celebrate the freedom of later life with flexible care arrangements, Inspired Villages offer an outstanding lifestyle choice for people whose existing homes no longer suit their needs.
It is backed by Legal & General and has a total of seven village sites, located in Warwickshire, West Sussex, Devon, Kent, Cheshire and Hampshire. With Legal & General’s long-term financial support, Inspired Villages Group will continue to acquire several sites per year. Creating vibrant villages on the edge of and within the UK’s towns and cities, it is looking to build where people want to live, close to family, friends and facilities.
Its philosophy is to create beautiful homes, unique environments and thriving communities that are age appropriate and can support people in making the most of their wellbeing as they move through later life. The chairman, and vision behind Inspired Villages, is Keith Cockell, who brings decades of experience in the conception and creation of retirement communities across the UK. The senior management team is headed by CEO, Jamie Bunce with the core management team in place to develop and operate a significant number of new communities across the UK in the next few years.

LEGAL & GENERAL GROUP
Established in 1836, Legal & General is one of the UK’s leading financial services groups and a major global investor, with a number of growing businesses in the US. Around 15 million people worldwide rely on us to help them save for the future and to protect their families and their homes.
We have three main business areas:
• Investing and annuities. At the end of 2017, Legal & General Retirement looked after £58 billion of assets in retirement annuities, for over one million people. We invest these assets to provide returns for our customers and to create value for the business, with over £14 billion invested in housing, urban regeneration, clean energy and small businesses. Legal & General Capital are also involved in investing our own shareholder funds.
• Investment management, where we had £983 billion total assets under management at the end of 2017. We are one of Europe’s leading investment managers, looking after pension schemes and other institutional clients in the UK, US, Asia and other global locations. LGIM is a leading UK workplace savings provider and has a growing UK retail investment business.
• Insurance, where Legal & General Insurance received £2.9 billion of gross premiums in 2017, providing life protection in the UK for over four million individual customers and two million people in company schemes. We also provide life insurance in the US for over one million people. Our UK General Insurance business offers household insurance, pet insurance and other products.

ukactive

ukactive is the UK’s leading not-for-profit health body for the physical activity sector, with almost 4,000 members from activity providers to major consumer brands, training facilities and equipment manufacturers. Members come from across the private, public and third sector and are united by ukactive’s longstanding and uncompromising commitment to getting more people, more active, more often. ukactive facilitates big impact partnerships, conceives and drives breakthrough campaigns, conducts critical research and galvanises key stakeholders to develop and deliver key projects that support and champion the physical activity agenda. The organisation’s efforts are centred on supporting a national ambition to “Turn the tide of physical inactivity”. For more information about ukactive, please contact Rob Gibson on 0207 400 8631, or robgibson@ukactive.org.uk