Housing interventions and hospital discharge

Care and Repair West of England working with the Dolphin Trust has published an evaluation of its Home from hospital casework service which has enable many older people to return home safely and has reduced delayed discharges.

Local Government Housing Commission report published

Local Government Association (LGA) has published its Housing Commission’s final report, Building our Homes, Communities and Future, setting out findings, conclusions and recommendations.

The Housing Commission* was tasked with setting out a forward-looking vision for the future of housing and the relationship between councils and communities around four topic headings;

• House building  
• Place shaping, community and infrastructure
• Employment, welfare reform and social mobility
• Housing, health and quality of life for an ageing population

With regard to the latter section, it calls for housing to be ‘at the heart of integrated health and care’ and makes seven related recommendations including;

25. Ensure sufficiently funded systems are in place to enable older people to modify their homes to support prevention and positive ageing in ways that generate savings to health and care services.

26. Plan and deliver housing as part of emerging integrated health and social care services, with activities and facilities designed to support older people to age well in their homes and communities for longer.

29. Age Friendly neighbourhood principles should be built into planning policies, integrating All Age Friendly housing as part of healthy, inclusive mixed tenure housing developments.

In 2017 a series of projects will commence to support and spread related innovation across local government.

*Sue Adams, CEO of Care & Repair England, was one of the expert advisers to the Commission on the housing, ageing & health section and the Older People’s Housing Champions made a submission to the Commission on housing and ageing.

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Designing for Downsizers

Some older people will actively consider moving to a property that is more suitable in meeting their changing circumstances. However there has been a series of recent reports highlighting an experience of frustration as there are limited desirable options available.

This report Designing for Downsizers, published by the University of Sheffield School of Architecture, sets out the key findings relating to the housing and place aspirations of ‘third-agers’ covering built form, accessibility and desirable features of the local area and community.

The DWELL project was conducted over three years and funded by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) led Lifelong Health and Wellbeing cross council research programme.

More information on the Dwell project including the full report can be accessed here

Creating age-friendly cities

This POSTnote (from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology) examines how housing, outdoor spaces and transport can be made more age-friendly.

It also highlights challenges for designing and delivering age-friendly cities.

Age Friendly Street design

Take a look at Care & Repair England’s new practical report on street design for age friendly neighbourhoods produced with input from the Manchester Age Friendly Design Group

age-friendly-street-design-sept-2016

 

New narrative on ageing from South East England Forum on Ageing

This new narrative from the South East England Forum on Ageing (SEEFA) promotes a more positive view of ageing and challenges the ‘old narrative’ that an ageing society is a social and economic threat and that older people are ‘a problem’.

The key messages, says SEEFA, need to be embraced by us all, even by older people themselves who so often doubt their own value and contribution.  By everyone sharing this leaflet as widely as possible and by using it to counter false assumptions and negative perceptions SEEFA hopes this will help to shape a society more willing to value and invest in its older members.

The leaflet is available on the SEEFA website

And if you require printed copies please contact Julia Pride juliapride@gmail.com.

 

Leeds Older People’s Forum listening event – influencing Leeds older person’s housing strategy

The Leeds Older People’s Forum Housing Working Group, along with Leed Council and Care & Repair England, organised a “listening event” in July.The aim was to give older people from across the City the opportunity to feed in their views on what their home means to them and what should feature in a Leeds older persons’ housing strategy.

Over 50 people came along. After introductory remarks from Cllr Charlwood (Adult Social Care), Bill Rollinson introduced the guest speakers: Rachael Docking, from the Centre for Ageing Better, talked about the need for housing that is fit for purpose and referred to the cost of poor housing to the NHS, which currently stands at £1.4 billion per annum. Lucy Jackson, Public Health Leeds, then spoke about the ongoing work being done between the council and the older people’s forum to progress a housing strategy for older people.

The delegates worked on round tables to discuss what sort of housing older people want to live in, what living well means for older people in their own home and what advice, information and support they might need to help this happen. A number of case studies, provided by Care & Repair Leeds, were then discussed on the tables.

Cllr Coupar, (Housing) gave the concluding remarks and undertook that the outputs of the event would be written up and would help to inform the development of the strategy.

John Welham

Updated resources for local action

With a number of new reports coming out on housing and ageing this month we have updated our resources page.

See https://housingactionblog.wordpress.com/resources-and-intelligence/

 

Local Government Association publishes Housing Commission preliminary findings

The Local Government Association (LGA) has published its report, Building our Homes, Communities and Future detailing the preliminary findings and emerging recommendations from its Housing Commission.

Click here for article on the LGA website.

The Housing Commission* was tasked with setting out a forward-looking vision for the future of housing and the relationship between councils and communities. There was a call for evidence earlier in the year around four topic headings;

• Housebuilding
• Place shaping, community and infrastructure
• Employment, welfare reform and social mobility
• Housing, health and quality of life for an ageing population

The headline call in the report is for a “national renaissance” in council housebuilding to solve the chronic housing shortage, and to deliver the mix of different homes that meet the growing and changing needs of communities.

With regard to the health and ageing section, the new report notes that most people as they age live in mainstream housing. It states that housing should be central to emerging models of integrated health and social care services and highlights the key role that councils are already playing in providing information, advice and support with property repair and adaptation.

It also calls for a development of a new market of all-age homes, as well as noting the importance of specialist housing, and of information, advice and help to enable people to plan ahead for their later life housing.

*Sue Adams, CEO of Care & Repair England, is one of the expert advisers to the Commission on the housing, ageing & health section.

Three new reports published on housing and ageing

Housing our Ageing Population – positive ideas Happi 3 published by the Housing LIN as a result of an Inquiry by the All Party Parliamentary group on housing and care for older people

Building safe choices, a feasibility study conducted by Stonewall Housing into the current provision of housing and related care and support for older LGBT people

Living well in old age: The value of UK housing interventions in supporting mental health and wellbeing in later life, Meredith Fendt-Newlin, Michelle Cornes,
Jill Manthorpe and Jo Moriarty, Kings College London