Housing LIN 2020 highlights
As this challenging year draws to a close, here are some of our monthly highlights from this year.
January
- The Welsh Government published our report for them, ‘An assessment of the demand for specialist housing and accommodation for older people in Wales’.
February
- The Housing LIN’s Jeremy Porteus joined the judging panel for MHCLG’s Home of 2030 competition (opens new window) for age-friendly homes and inclusive living (winners announced in December 2020) to coincide with the government commission’s new design guide, ‘Building Better, Building Beautiful (opens new window)’. We also supported Legrand’s report on unleashing the digital premium.
March
- As COVID-19 gripped the nation, we had no choice but to cancel our pre-conference reception and Vision 2020 conference in Manchester. We did not see the pandemic coming! However, we quickly produced a Business Continuity Plan and set up our online Coronavirus Info Hub, producing a selection of practice briefings for the sector to keep abreast of the ever changing situation.
April
- With thanks to support from the Mercers Company, and with COVID-19 impacting on the wellbeing of many people, we created a new suite of resources on our website dedicated to addressing loneliness and isolation along with an A-Z of good practice examples.
- We also worked with partners to co-found the Workhome Project and and wrote a Housing LIN blog on ‘work ready’ HAPPI.
May
- The Housing LIN was appointed by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People to be the secretariat on a new Inquiry into the lived experiences of people with dementia and their housing circumstances. This will report in February 2021.
June
- We teamed up with Foundations and ADASS to host a major joint conference, Recover, Reset and Regenerate, opened by Minister for Housing and Rough Sleeping, Luke Hall MP. And if you missed them, we updated our Extra Care Housing Design Factsheet by PRP followed by a design and cost modelling toolkit with Pozzoni, RLB and CPC.
July
- In a letter to the Housing Minister, we supported the HoME Coalition call for more accessible housing and also signed up to the Stop Ageism (opens new window) campaign . And on the HAPPI front, we presented two awards to schemes who won this category at the 2020 Housing Design Awards.
August
- The National Housing Federation published a report on Supported Housing for people with long term care and support needs which they commissioned from the Housing LIN.
September
- As part of our digital strategy, and in place of our popular regional network meets and roundtable discussions, we created a new brand networking brand – #HAPPIhour (opens new window) – and kicked of our autumn series with a new series webinars. The format worked so well, we used it for our rescheduled annual conference earlier this month.
October
- The government published their National Statement of Expectations on Supported Housing and cited Housing LIN examples of practice and support in several places. We also worked with Appello on 3 digital guides for the sector.
November
- We were pleased to call for a better range of housing choices for people with a learning disability in a joint report with Learning Disability England entitled: Finding our own way home – a ‘big’ conversation. This was followed this month with new LGA guidance on Specialised Supported Housing written by the Housnig LIN.
December
- We were joined by over 800 people for our rescheduled Housing LIN Summit 2020 which coincided with the publication of our CollaborAGE Directory: Championing Communities, and it was the first ever HAPPI Awareness Week (opens new window).
And looking ahead to 2021, we have some exciting things planned to coincide with the Housing LIN’s 10th anniversary independent of government. They include:
- The commencement of the TAPPI Inquiry.
- The conclusion of the APPG on Housing and Care for Older People Inquiry on housing and dementia.
- A wide range of new blogs, viewpoints, case studies and reports along with a series of new thematic and regional HAPPI Hour webinars, and
- Tailored support to many of our members to help enable them to adopt or adapt the Housing LIN’s learning to their organisational needs and plans.