OM DENNE EPISODE
Bringing Community Back Together | Season 2 Episode 2
Dr Hannah Forbes | Goodwill Starts . Systems Sustains
"A program is fantastic, but it's only sustainable through the goodwill of the person running the program and the supports around it. When those supports falter, the good work of that program may be lost."
What if the problem isn't that we need more evidence about the benefits of intergenerational connection ….but that we've designed communities that make those connections increasingly difficult to sustain?
In this episode of Bringing Community Back Together,Samantha Heron sits down with Dr Hannah Forbes, Occupational Therapist, researcher and lecturer at Australian Catholic University, whose PhD through the GrandSchools project explored intergenerational living and learning, and the systems ands paces that allow connection between generations to flourish.
But Hannah's interest in this work began long before academia.
Growing up with two much-loved grandmothers who shaped herlife in very different ways, and later sharing her home with her grandmotherEstelle during her teenage and university years , Hannah experienced first hand what it means to live alongside the wisdom of another generation.
In this conversation, Hannah shares:
• What the evidence actually tells us about intergenerational programs — and why the question is increasingly not whether they work, but how we make their impact sustainable.
• Why goodwill isn't enough. The passionate facilitators holding many intergenerational programs together are often the "unsung heroes" — but what happens when that person leaves, funding disappears or organisational priorities change?
• The young person whose words stayed with Hannah: a 17-year-old who described how spending time with older people gave her something extraordinarily powerful — hope.
• Why we've unintentionally designed generations apart. Schools here. Aged care over there. Childcare somewhere else. Hannah asks what might become possible if we intentionally designed shared spaces for generations to live, learn and contribute alongside one another.
• The tension between protection and connection. Safeguards matter, but have layers of regulation and red tape also made ordinary intergenerational relationships increasingly difficult?
• The GrandSchools vision: what if senior living, schools, early childhood, gardens, arts and community spaces were designed together ...creating opportunities for connection as part of everyday life rather than something requiring a special "program"?
• Why older and younger people both underestimate what they have to offer each other, and the extraordinary reciprocity that emerges when the conditions for genuine relationships are created.
And Hannah brings it back to something beautifully simple:
Connection is the key.
Whether it's an older person finding purpose, a teenager discovering hope, or Hannah herself being dragged nervously along to choir by her best friend Bella, we sometimes need another person to create a doorway into belonging.
This conversation leaves us with a bigger challenge.
We have the evidence. So how do we now design our schools, aged care homes, neighbourhoods, policies and communities to make intergenerational connection part of everyday life?
🎧 Listen now, and if you enjoy the conversation, please follow Bringing Community Back Together — it's free and helps more of these conversations find the people who need them.
