What is it to 'age well'? Disentangling long and short term goals in aged support

Evidence-based Policy in Ageing Well Population ageing has driven an increasing government interest in policies and practices to support ageing well. However, the complexity of interacting factors influencing the quality of the ageing experience means that ensuring that such policy and practice initiatives are evidence based presents a major challenge for policy makers. The purpose of this project was to construct a policy design framework to assist policy makers in this task. The project involved the critical analysis of a broad range of ageing well policy documents. While these initiatives showed a robust use of evidence in understanding the challenges of an ageing population and identifying the factors associated with ageing well, the strategic responses to these issues were notable for their lack of an evidence base. The complex and context specific nature of factors influencing the ageing experience both complicate the process of identifying appropriate evidence and limit the utility and transferability of any identified research evidence and/or models. Also, such evidence remains relatively scarce because, while it can only really be generated within the real world practice context, bureaucratic and political processes and timelines are relatively un- supportive of reflective and evaluative practice. We argue for an acknowledgement that complex policy initiatives, to a large extent, need to ‘learn by doing’. We propose utilising a program logic framework to identify relevant mid-level theoretical evidence in the initial design stage but to build on that evidence and refine both policy and practice through rigorous and continuous quality improvement evaluation.