Agenda item

The Sheltered Housing Review consultation was presented by Nicola Atkinson.

About 18 months ago the council identified the need to review the sheltered house service it provides. It realised it needed to look at other possible ways of working. This consultation is about what the council believe to be the best possible option.

The consultation continues to 24 September 2012 and everyone is welcome to take part.

At the moment, support is only given to sheltered housing residents, so 95% of residents of Northampton cannot access the service. There are inflexible levels of support provided even though some people may have varying health and disability needs. People in real need may not get as much help and quality of help as would be good, while other people get more help than they need – because the system is too inflexible.

There are increasing numbers of elderly and disabled people in Northampton. Although many people want to stay living in their own homes, the current sheltered housing service only helps those who have moved into the council’s sheltered housing.

Things need to change and improve to help more people and to help people more appropriately.

There are 27 community rooms across the Borough are under-used but could be a good space for people in the community to use. The council is aware that community groups often are looking for space to do activities. Most of the community rooms are on bus routes so people who do not live on the doorstep to them could reach them quite easily. Some people in sheltered housing close to community rooms may not need help in their home itself but might find it difficult to get out and about. It may be that community rooms could be used more to bring help close enough for people to access it.

Like many public services, the council is also facing a reduction in funding to provide services.

The proposals the council is asking about are around personalised support, recognising individual support needs available to all who need it – not just to people in sheltered housing.

The focus will be on enabling – helping people to help themselves, reflected in a new proposed name “Independent Living Service”.

People can get help from Housing to take part in the consultation if they need it e.g. people to go round to a person at home or help to come into the council.

Olive highlighted the stress created among many of her service users when they receive papers from the council and fear they may be thrown out of their homes. Nicky explained how council staff are trained to support vulnerable people in this consultation and to tell people that this consultation is not related to their property or their future ability to live in that property.

Olive suggested Housing promote community rooms to Age UK and other organisations who are always looking for community venues e.g. for falls prevention and tea dance activities.

John mentioned that ‘loneliness’ is a word sometimes associated with ‘independent’ and asked about use of volunteers and wider groups of people using community rooms to re-create a natural community feel, rather than isolated segregated older people.

David cited work at West Sussex Council in which over 80% of service users said through consultation that they liked and understood what ‘independent living’ meant, so the council had gone with that.

More information about this consultation can be found at www.northampton.gov.uk/consultations.

People can take the survey at www.northampton.gov.uk/shelteredreview