The Homeshare International Network is a learning community that enables members to:
- share news and information
- develop good practice
- share tools and resources
- work cooperatively for mutual benefit.
HI in Conversation is a bi-monthly online discussion of Homeshare topics to help meet those goals. Some conversations are restricted to Network members while others are open to anyone interested in and supporting the Homeshare concept.
Sessions are conducted in English and are scheduled in UTC.
What is UTC?
All time zones are defined by their offset from UTC. The offset is expressed as either UTC- or UTC+ and the number of hours and minutes.
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is often interchanged or confused with UTC. But GMT is a time zone and UTC is a time standard. Neither UTC nor GMT ever change for Daylight Saving Time (DST). However, some of the countries that use GMT switch to different time zones during their DST period. For example, the United Kingdom is not on GMT all year, it uses British Summer Time (BST), which is one hour ahead of GMT, during the summer months.
Source: TimeandDate.com
Upcoming Conversations:
- July 5, 2023 (7:00 UTC find your time): Matching Essentials (Network members only)
- 20 September 2023: Wendy Francis on HANZA’s collaboration with the New Zealand government.
- November 2023 (date to be finalized): Homesharing in Residential Homes
Matching Essentials is a repeat of the January session at a different time to accommodate other time zones. The HI Network in Conversation will be led by Sibel Whitehead and Zaira De Novellis of Supportmatch Homeshare with case studies, discussion and opportunity for questions. This session is restricted to registered HI Network Members.
Matching Essentials
This free session is just for HI Network members.
Wednesday, July 5, 2023 |
It is now
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
If you have questions please email us.
If you want to be added to our mailing list for information about future Conversations, please subscribe.
Past Presentations
For information on previous Conversations, tap the titles below.
The Importance of Social Connections
About the Conversation
Heather Thompson is currently engaged as a speaker on the topics of age-friendly communities, aging well, and elder abuse. She serves as the Chair of the Halton (Ontario) Elder Abuse Prevention Network and is an active member of the National Intergenerational Advisory Committee in Canada.

Heather Thompson
Heather is strong advocate for age-friendly, inclusive communities where all people can fully participate without barriers. She contributes to research (see National Institute on Aging documents) and has presented on the topics of Aging, and Age-friendly initiatives at local, provincial, national and international conferences and events.
Heather completed graduate studies at Queen’s University, with a Master of Science degree in Aging and Health. Her work and volunteer experience have encompassed leadership roles in the non-profit sector in Quebec and Ontario, including youth justice, disabilities, mental health, community support services for older adults, palliative and hospice care. More recently, she served for over 10 years as the Director of Age-Friendly Initiatives with Community Development Halton, a nonprofit organization serving Halton region. She actively steered the activities and projects of the Burlington Age-Friendly Council within the World Health Organization’s framework of an Age-Friendly practice, and served as the Chair of the Halton Age-Friendly Network, Co-Chair of the Southern Ontario Age-Friendly Network and Co-chair of the Older Adult Isolation Action Table with Halton Region. For over four years, Heather served as a Board Director with the Ontario Association of Councils on Aging.
Heather presented on Through an Age-Friendly Perspective – Understanding the Importance of Social Connections and their Impact on Health and Well-being of Older Adults.
Some key learnings:
- Risk factors of isolation and loneliness
- Understand how Age-Friendly communities and inter-generational programs contribute to the participation, health, independence and security of older adults
- The importance of social connections and their impact on the health and well-being of older adults
- Best practices in the prevention and reduction of isolation and loneliness
- How Homeshare can protect against isolation and loneliness
View the presentation
Review the slides:
For more information, read:
- Opinion | Loneliness Is an Epidemic in America, Writes the Surgeon General – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
- Social prescribing (nih.gov)
Watch
Age doesn’t define you – Global Campaign to Combat Ageism – #AWorld4AllAges – YouTube (1:44 min)
The Loneliness Epidemic | Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Social Isolation – YouTube (9:45 min)
Economic savings for the Irish Government through Homeshare
“Economic savings for the Irish Government through Homesharing; A study by Executive MBA students from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Business in Ireland.”
The purpose of the MBA Social Enterprise project is to provide a learning experience for MBA students in Social Entrepreneurship through conducting consultancy projects for social enterprises. THE HomeShare has teamed with Trinity College School of Business since 2020 on various challenges.
In 2023, THE HomeShare challenged the group to research the economic savings through homeshare for the Irish Government, with particular focus on hospital admissions, Long Term Care admissions and Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) for younger people. Read the report.
The students built a Data Dashboard to work out the health/medical savings for each local area – view the video. They also found that one social impact of THE Homeshare is integration, combating racism and segregation, combating anti-immigration sentiment, strengthening civil society….
Trinity College Dublin MBA Presentation
recording of HI in Conversation: Cost savings to the Irish government through HomeShare (Zoom)
watch edited presentation (Chrome)
Matching Essentials
This session will be offered again at 7:00 am UTC on 5 July 2023.
2022
November 2022: The National Health Service (NHS) and Social Care in England, and how it is tackling housing & inequality through Homeshare
About the Conversation
The National Health Service (NHS) and Social Care in England, and how it is tackling housing & inequality through Homeshare led by Ian Burden, Head of Transformation, NHS England – South West with Sibel Whitehead of Supportmatch Homeshare.
The National Health Service (NHS) and Social Care systems in England are a complex set of arrangements covering a wide range of organisations. This complexity can make it difficult for new services to engage with the NHS, especially where the service works best covering a number of organisations.
At the same time, issues around housing in England are becoming more acute covering poor quality housing driven by a lack of housing supply and strong demand. With housing being a key determinant of health outcomes, the NHS, in its role as an Anchor Institution, is driving a programme targeting health inequalities, as well as trying to solve its staff housing issues.
The session gave a basic overview of the NHS, its role looking at housing in the aspects of health outcomes and the role that Homeshare can take to support improved health outcomes, both in England and other global health systems.
Background Information
People who want to know more about the NHS (which doesn’t cover social care) can start off with this 2017 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEARD4I3xtE (6:34 minutes) which is now out of date but helps illustrate the journey very well and includes some details that people may find interesting. However, that then needs to be followed by looking at https://www.england.nhs.uk/get-involved/resources/involvejargon and specifically looking at the ‘understanding the NHS’ link which includes a video (5:43 minutes) that provides the update on system structures. It provides an interesting look at how things have changed over the last 5 years with ‘STPs’ and ‘ACO’ now being ‘ICS’. The NHS England page also includes a link to a jargon buster …. with over 1,000 health acronyms!
What may also be interesting for people is that the NHS is looking to tackle health inequalities through the Core20 Plus 5 and supporting our initiative to be seen as an Anchor Institution which we modeled on the US. This role as an anchor institution includes income generation to support communities.
With all of the above, the NHS is looking more and more at Population Health Management and data sources, including from other international systems. We are interested in seeing what other countries are doing and more specifically, if there are case studies/data that support the conversation.
- View the Nov 29 presentation
- View the Nov 22 presentation
September 2022: the economic potential of inter-generational solidarity homesharing by Joachim Pasquet, Directeur of Cohabilis.September 2022: The economic potential of inter-generational solidarity homesharing (France)
Contact us if you have a suggestion for a future session.
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