A new report, sponsored by Mears, by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services in England (ADASS) looks at how extra care housing can contribute to meeting the needs of the country’s older population.
The report – A Better Offer for Older People - Making extra care housing work for your community – examines the potential, models and challenges of extra care housing.
It says the promise of extra care is significant: a means of enabling people to have their care needs met while retaining their independence and avoiding admission to residential care. Local authorities stand to benefit from lower spend on residential care and the efficiency that comes with having care workers and service users co-located. It should also free up under-occupied properties helping ease the pressure on local housing markets. What’s more older people who live in extra care housing have fewer hospital admissions and feel less lonely than those who stay in their own homes, according to an Aston University study.
The report features interviews with residents at Blaise Weston Court in Bristol, where the Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated Mears’ care service as Outstanding. Only 2% of all adult social care services in England have received this top rating since 2014 in 33,000 inspections. (Read more here)
Alan Long, Executive Director of Mears, says in the report: “There are two obvious advantages with extra care – one is having a close-knit group of care workers aligned to a group of service users in a particular location. The other is you’ve got a building that is better suited to the people who live there.”
He adds: “When we look at our customer satisfaction statistics we always get higher scores for people who live in extra care compared to those who get domiciliary care because all those other things, such as social isolation and the broader quality of life, can be much more effectively addressed in an extra care environment. The tragedy is there’s just not enough of it.”