Older People Deciding on Grants for Older People. An inclusive process with the principles of co-production and resilience at its heart. Commenting on the experience, one of the Older People participating said: ‘Our voices are being heard at last.’
As part of Edinburgh’s ‘Reshaping Care for Older People – Change Fund’ Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations’ Council (EVOC) ran a unique Participatory Budgeting (PB) project where Older People made decisions on small grants for work with, by and for older people.
This creative and innovative PB project Canny wi’ Cash – employed a distributed participatory budgeting model, with facilitators going to where Older People were – at lunch clubs, day centres, etc – over a fortnight to gather their votes. The votes were tallied and results calculated. Altogether, almost 350 Older People across the city engaged with the project, voting at 37 venues over a whole fortnight, to make decisions on just shy of £60,000 of Edinburgh’s Reshaping Care for Older People Change Fund.
Launching the report at a celebration event on 30 January 2014, Cllr Ricky Henderson, City of Edinburgh Council’s Convener of the Joint Health and Social Care Committee, remarked on how the simplest ideas are often the most effective. At the launch event Cllr Maureen Child, Convener of the Communities & Neighbourhoods Committee, spoke to a range of groups and noted that they’d found the process accessible and user-friendly.
The question on everyone’s lips was – of course – will the project run again? As of now we just don’t know. We can, however, hope…
To find out more about Canny wi’ Cash, just contact Milind Kolhatkar or Dianne Morrison at EVOC (Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations’ Council) – they can’t stop talking about it!
- For personal experiences and details about this unique project Read the full report