HLINks: 27th April - 1 May 2020

In last week's HLINks Jeremy Porteus drew attention to the value of networking with the Housing LIN. This week he highlight how traditional styles of management will need to adapt to a brave new world post Covid-19. This will require greater organisational agility to:

• respond flexibly to changing economic environments and customer expectations
• adopt a more networked approach to cross professional boundaries and build new or strengthen existing relationships across housing, health and adult social care; and 
• gear itself to more inclusive leadership with an emphasis on knowledge sharing at all levels to accelerate and spread learning faster. 

The Housing LIN is well placed to enable you to connect with people and ideas and to draw on our skills and resources to help you improve, innovate and codesign a better range of housing choices with older people and those with a disability or a long term condition. 

This week we feature guest blogs from:

• Guild Living's Eugene Marchese on the pressures of loneliness and isolation brought into focus during the Coronavirus crisis as families and friends are kept apart, and
• Invisible Creation's Laura Wood on he true impact home design has on our lives, and the opportunity for us to re-evaluate standards and design principles of age-friendly housing and designs at home post COVID-19.

We also have further information about the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, including updates to our Coronavirus Info Hub (opens new window) with updates to guidance from the UK government and provide a round-up of news and resources on housing with care matters.

HLINks also features:

• An update on our Home from Hospital map, developed jointly with Foundations, which highlights examples of where housing organisations and local services are, or have been actively supporting hospital discharges and helping to get people home
• A round-up of other news, resources, competitions and online events on specialist housing, design and technology, planning and health and care relevant for our sector.

Next week we will be publishing two new guest blogs: the first by the Pretty Good Project’s Laura Wigzell on work ready housing and adapting the HAPPI design principle for work readiness. The second - held over from this week - is by the collective foundation’s Andre Damian and considers the value of different forms of co-living and how it has the potential to foster social connectedness. We are also looking to publish a new COVID-19 Practice Briefing (No5) on changes to welfare benefits.