Online community care platforms for older adults: do they support ageing-in-place?

This dissertation focuses on the evaluation of online community platform for older adults. These platforms aim to support civic participation on a community level, and are often introduced to benefit the ageing population of a community. In particular in the Netherlands, numerous online community care platforms have been deployed and implemented. Although they are expected to contribute to the support of community-dwelling older adults, there is still a lot of uncertainty and debate about their added value. Large-scale implementation or use barely occurs despite considerable efforts to implement these platforms. Furthermore, barely any studies report on understanding what drives (dis)continued use of these platforms once they have been implemented. The main objective of this dissertation was to evaluate user-centred developed online platforms that can be used by community-dwelling older adults to participate in their community and to arrange mutual informal care and volunteering. The underlying aims were to: 1) investigate the needs and requirements of older adults with regard to an online community platform; 2) explore which online (health)care platforms for older adults were available and to provide a typology of these platforms; 3) examine the experiences and perceived impact of older adults regarding an online community care platform; 4) investigate the experiences and lessons learned from other initiatives that implemented online community care platforms.