Liz Zacharias, Senior Consultant at Campbell Tickell, details CT’s lessons learned from assisting several Transforming Care Partnerships (TCPs) develop their housing plans.
The Transforming Care Programme1 works to support people with a learning disability and/or autism spectrum disorder, who have behaviours that challenge or a mental health condition, to move from in-patient care, to community-based services.
TCPs were established to implement the programme locally in each NHSE region. Each TCP is required to develop a housing strategy/plan with the overall aim to develop integrated community-based housing and support, reducing reliance on in-patient beds in the longer term.
Lessons from housing delivery
Campbell Tickell assisted several TCPs in the Midlands to develop their housing plans. Here are our key lessons learned.
- A multi-agency steering group really helps: one that includes representatives from CCG and Adult Care commissioners; the Social Work Team; Children’s Services; Local Authority Housing Strategy; and NHS Property Services; NHS Specialist Commissioning; has a better chance of achieving agreement on the needs and the way forward.
- A clear data specification that is General Data Protection Requirements (GDPR) compliant is key: data specification that enables the local authority to generate data for the accommodation plan without breaching confidentiality.
- Persistence: particularly when following up on data gaps and obtaining supplementary data, to ensure that a clear picture of needs and supply can be established.
- Engagement with practitioners is essential: to work through credible assumptions for modelling, to ensure the plan includes accurate data on demand and usage and is realistic in terms of the supply needs.
- Identifying quality, commissioning and market shaping issues that need to form part of the plan.
- Producing granular information about the housing needs of individuals. Information collected should include the type of tenure to be considered, whether shared or individual accommodation is appropriate, specific physical needs and public safety issues.
Notably, a TCP Housing Plan can succeed when:
- Partners know their local housing market: the type and location of current provision, who the housing developers and housing providers are, and how to engage with them using the Housing Plan.
- Partners understand their environment locally for housing development: does market management and market shaping activities need to be put into action?
- Partners are aware of opportunities to add developments to their Councils’ existing housing and regeneration strategies: housing for people with learning disabilities can be included as part of a mixed economy of provision.
Many Councils are establishing housing development companies of their own, and the increase in Council’s borrowing abilities could be an opportunity to secure investment in housing for people with severe or moderate learning disabilities who are in institutional care or at risk of entering it.
- The accommodation plan, if done right, provides robust and evidence-based business case for an invest-to-save approach: this can be adopted by partnerships to move people out of institutional care and generate savings to the whole health and care system.
Read the our full report here.
1 A partnership between NHS England, the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Care – ADASS
To discuss this article, contact Liz Zacharias : liz.zacharias@campbelltickell.com
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