Rebranding and reducing the age criteria for sheltered housing
We are currently undertaking a review of the sheltered housing service, having restructured and decommissioned some schemes, whilst at the same time looking to remodel others.
Next piece of work is to look at rebranding the service and perhaps look to decrease the age criteria to 55 years instead of 60 years(or perhaps increase to 65 years).
Any other providers out there who have done something similar and happy to share good practice please?
Many thanks, Nigel Andrews.
Whatever age you choose, do it carefully and one approach would be to perhaps reflect the age profile of the community your sheltered housing serves. If life expectancy in a community is 73 with poor health, then go to 55 but if life expectancy is 84 then why not move it to 65.
You can have a broad age range of up to 40 years within a scheme which has its pros and cons. Look first at what you want your sheltered community to look like - age profile and care needs.
We are about to work with providers to dedesignate some of the schemes from sheltered to general older peoples housing, and to work up some of the 'communal' type sheltered into 'housing with care'. The consulation commneces inthe next few months . I woudl be very interetsed to hear about the imapct of these chnages you have made , and how they were managed . eg did you have to move the more dependent and frial ?
We use 3 different housing providers, two has the age crietia of 55 and the other 60. However the provider with the age 60 crietia regularly accepts people who are 50 and over on a case by case basis as long as their needs can be met by the model of service and do not pose risks to othertenants.