What are guiding principles?
Guiding principles are similar to one’s moral compass. Our guiding principles will help steer your decisions, planning, and practices as you work to become more age-friendly. Our five guiding principles serve as the foundation for building an age-friendly community.
Our five guiding principles for building an age-friendly community are:
- Respect and support for all citizens
- Access and inclusion for all citizens
- Community engagement in decision making
- Livability
- Accountability
These guiding principles may be included in your organization's mission statement or philosophies. Others might be a new way to direct your community towards becoming more age-friendly. Watch the video below for an introduction about the guiding principles.
Why use our guiding principles?
Creating an age-friendly community is more complex than just checking items of a list. The guiding principles will help direct you and ensure you consider the care of all citizens in the community. The guiding principles also help ensure your age-friendly community will be sustainable over time.
Guiding principles in the dementia context
Together reflect and discuss how the five guiding principles are incorporated in day-to-day care, programs, and services for people living with dementia and their family. Keep these conversations going as you build your age-friendly community. Take notes on your discussions and reflect on the guiding principles often.
Congratulations on taking this first step to becoming an age-friendly community!
Tips for navigating our website
- Click on each of the guiding principles below to read about each guiding principle in more detail:
- At the bottom of every page, you will see how each guiding principle applies to dementia as well as reflective questions to get you thinking about how to make your age-friendly community a dementia-friendly community.
- After you have navigated through all five guiding principles, you will be reminded to click Building blocks to go to that next section.