Planning for age-friendly communities using Serious Game methodology
Meet the speakers
Jeremy Porteus FRSA, Chief Executive, Housing LIN
Jeremy was formerly National Lead for Housing at the Department of Health responsible for the Extra Care Housing capital fund and the Prevention Technology Grant programme.
After leaving the department, he founded the independent Housing LIN (Learning and Improvement Network), bringing together over 20,000 housing, health and social care practitioners in England, Wales and Scotland to identify and showcase innovative housing and technology enabled solutions for an ageing population, such as the HAPPI and TAPPI programmes.
Jeremy was a judge on the Government’s Homes for 2030 Board, a member of Innovate UK’s Healthy Ageing Advisory Board and the Dunhill Medical Trust funded Housing with Care Commission. In 2023, he was appointed onto the government’s Older People’s Housing Taskforce.
Professor Vikki McCall is a Professor of Social Policy in the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling
Vikki’s work includes leading projects focusing on housing, ageing, stigma, co-production the role of front-line workers, service users, volunteers and the policy process. She is Principal Investigator on UK-wide projects including Intersectional Stigma of Place-based Ageing (ISPA) project funded by the ESRC (2022-2027) and Co-I on the UKRI funded Designing homes for healthy cognitive ageing: co-production for impact and scale (DesHCA) project (2020-2024) part of the UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge. Vikki is also Creative Director and co-founder of Socialudo, a social enterprise supporting research impact through Serious Gaming, currently working with SCIE, United St Saviour’s Charity and the Housing LIN (funded by the Dunhill Medical Trust) on supporting local housing partnerships in planning for ageing.
Dr Rebekah Luff Senior Research Analyst, Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)
Dr Rebekah Luff leads on a wide range of policy and practice projects, including for DHSC, Social Care Wales and the Northern Ireland Government. She was project manager for the Commission on the Role of Housing in the Future of Care and Support, funded by the Dunhill Medical Trust. Building on the roadmap set out in both the Commission, and subsequent Government white papers, she led on two interconnecting projects to support local areas to develop a vision and strategy for housing for older adults; the Serious Games pilot in Southwark and a toolkit to support local areas develop their place-based plans for housing for older adults.
Ms Alison Benzimra, Head of Research and Influence, United St. Saviour’s Charity.
Alison has extensive experience in the housing and ageing sectors. She works closely with older residents, staff and research partners on a variety of projects. Alison’s work is focused on demonstrating on how almshouse architecture and design in combination with the resident support models can lead to improved outcomes for residents and sharing these learning widely. Her involvement in the British Society of Gerontology’s Ageing, Business and Society Special Interest Group underpins her belief that health and socioeconomic inequalities across the life course can be addressed by fostering a collaborative approach between the public, private and third sectors.