Technology helps elderly to stay at home
There's no place like home – especially when it comes to helping older people and those with care needs to maintain their wellbeing and independence within their communities. This is why there's a growing drive to integrate housing provision with health and social care.
But how exactly can housing providers ensure they deliver the right facilities and support for vulnerable people, to help build integrated and sustainable communities? I believe the housing sector's skills and resources will be key to helping social care and health providers sustain services while budgets are reducing, and provide a better experience for those with long-term needs.
Building in care
Six years ago, One Housing Group decided to embrace tele-care technology fully – alarms, sensors, pill dispensers, helplines designed to help people, even those with dementia, continue living in their own homes – and make it a core part of our service offering. As well as expanding our own services, we wanted to promote aspiration, independence and social mobility among our residents, and increase choice and personalisation of services.
We saw that tele-care was key to improving services and outcomes for individuals, and for delivering significant operational and maintenance benefits for us. So we redesigned our approach, to build the technology into our accommodation and services as a fundamental component, not an add-on – enabling true personalisation according to residents' needs.
By using tele-care, we are providing a service that is more cost effective than registered care or nursing accommodation, offering better outcomes and increased satisfaction for people with long-term care needs. It reduces the number of hospital admissions for incidents such as falls, and provides care and support for people to manage their conditions. Furthermore, it also gives us a business edge over other housing providers.
For example, Bradford's Partnership for Older People Project (Popp), which was established to lead the strategic working for older people and their related issues, found that an extra 26% of users were able to stay in their own home – avoiding unwanted care home admissions. A further 13% of users avoided a hospital admission and there was a 29% reduction in homecare hours. If expanded to its full capacity, Popp estimates its programme would save £550,000 each year in Bradford alone.
Investing in the future
As an organisation, we invest £1m per year to promote aspiration, self-reliance and social mobility, offering initiatives to encourage involvement in the community. Our training centre in Arlington aims to support independence for people of all ages and abilities, through employment initiatives, older persons' daytime groups, youth work and volunteering.
Mixed housing estates
Experience has shown us that mono-tenure social housing estates – often referred to as potential sink estates – are places that people often don't want to live. With reductions in housing grants, we rely heavily on profits from selling and renting private housing to fund the development and refurbishment of affordable homes. Without this, we could not provide the community-based services that we offer. Mixed tenure schemes have the potential to facilitate social interaction and a richer community experience without imposing on residents' privacy, which helps counteract social exclusion and feelings of isolation that can happen in mono-tenure estates.
Building in benefits
Through our supported housing services, floating support and retirement accommodation, our services help more than 5,000 people a year in London and the south-east to live safely and independently.
It's difficult to predict what the future holds for care services and who will pay for them. Recent market reviews, such as the Dilnot commission's report on how to reform funding for adult social care, had few concrete proposals, leaving many people unclear about their options. Should they purchase a retirement care plan, or make other decisions about their future?
What is certain is that tele-health and tele-care technologies give us, as housing providers, the opportunity to offer our tenants a range of services to help ensure their long-term independence and wellbeing, regardless of future government policies or mandates.
Kevin Beirne is group housing director of housing care and support for One Housing Group
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