Project background

The purpose of this Policy is to ensure the invaluable contribution of older people to the Yarra community is acknowledged and celebrated. It also outlines Yarra's commitment to fostering an inclusive, supportive, and responsive environment to enable our residents to age well. The Policy is designed to prioritise and address the evolving needs of Yarra's ageing population through commitment across key priority areas.

In 2023, we held a broad community consultation to help better understand the community’s expectation of Council’s responsibilities and our role within this space. We then reviewed what you told us and used it to inform the development of a draft Ageing Well Policy.

Between Monday 17 November and Monday 15 December 2025 we asked the community to review the draft Policy and provide feedback on the four priority areas we identified to help guide our actions moving forward.

They are:

Advocacy and stewardship

This commits us to championing accessible home-based aged care, seeking improvements to the local transport network, and promoting age-friendly housing in public, social and affordable developments.

It also flags elder abuse awareness, integrating older people’s needs into family-violence prevention initiatives, and prioritising responses for older women facing heightened risks of poverty, housing insecurity and homelessness.

Opportunities for healthy ageing

This includes reviewing leisure and aquatic facilities for age-friendly access and affordability, expanding physical activity programs, and sustaining partnerships to strengthen social connection — with targeted support for older people with disability or health conditions who cannot easily leave their homes.

It also commits to making information easier to understand and accessible, including exploring alternative formats and major community languages.

Creating age-friendly environments

This includes ensuring we include accessible open spaces, buildings, pavements and walkways in our planning. Proposed actions include increasing seating and shade in open spaces, improving accessibility of council buildings with inclusive signage and accessible bathrooms, and progressively enhancing footpaths and intersections for safety and comfort.

The policy also points to improved wayfinding to accessible public transport and key destinations and investigating maps with accessibility descriptions.

On housing, it proposes applying recognised accessibility standards — including AS 4299 adaptable housing and liveable housing design guidelines — across planning to support ageing in place and local downsizing.

Community services

This focuses on working with partners on access and coordination across aged care and disability services, supporting locally run programs to reduce loneliness, building staff capability to better support older people (including those with cognitive and/or sensory impairments), and strengthening cultural competence.

It also flags practical supports such as community lunches, improving thermal comfort for older households, and linking people in unsafe housing with multidisciplinary services.

What we heard and how it influenced the final plan?

In response to Stage 2 community feedback, we have made the following updates to the Policy:

• Bringing to the fore key disadvantages and strengths as they relate to Yarra’s First Peoples by adding information in the introduction material regarding ‘Ageing Equity and First Peoples’.
• Strengthening the inclusion of First Peoples and CALD community members by amending ‘Priority 1: Advocacy and Stewardship’ – ‘Objective 1.1 influencing government and service providers to better meet older people's needs’ to specify advocating for the delivery of culturally appropriate aged care services.
• Noting that clear signage is an objective under ‘Priority 3: Age-friendly Environments’, as well as being an aspect of communications program and service design.
• Indicating that affordability considerations relate to ‘Priority 2: Opportunities for Healthy Ageing’ and the objective under this priority of ‘Supporting Active Lifestyles’ in older age.

What happens next?

At the Council Meeting on Tuesday 10 March 2026, Council adopted the Yarra Ageing Well Policy. The next step will be to develop an operational plan and produce annual reporting, to assist us in reviewing and evaluating the policy’s priority areas each year.

Visit the project page

To read more about this consultation please visit the Helping Yarra Age Well on Your Say Yarra.