Winners and commendations
HIA Service of the Year
West of England Care & Repair - winner
WE Care & Repair impressed the judges
through its wide range of services offered
and the number of customers helped on
a yearly basis.
During the previous year, despite
experiencing
significant
cuts
and
reducing the size of their teams, they
have created and started implementing a
new strategy and have moved to a
multidisciplinary area team model, that
includes
handyperson,
casework,
technical,
volunteers
and
home
independence centres. The move has created a speedier service for clients that is closely
aligned with local health, social care and housing services.
The changes have also enabled the agency to have the most successful year so far; some
notable achievements include: responded to 18,500 enquiries with information and advice on
housing and on average they resolved issues within one day. They also completed over
14,000 handyperson jobs and their service was rated as good or very good by 92% of
clients.
The agency delivers a range of support across the West of England and has a close working
relationship with local NHS staff, social care and housing teams.
Revival HIA - commended
Revival HIA are strongly embedded in the local picture, contributing to Stoke on Trent
Council’s housing, older people and fuel poverty strategies in order to improve the fabric and
energy efficiency of the existing housing stock as well as neighbourhood renewal. Their
services straddle health, social care and housing, providing a holistic “one-stop” shop for
customers.
The HIA have structured their services to tailor appropriate interventions at any point on a
customer’s pathway to improved wellbeing, through both preventative and crisis
interventions.
Sponsored by:
Strategic links with health and social care,
developed through work on extra-care
housing, were instrumental in showcasing
Revival’s wider offer in supporting priorities,
including early hospital discharge. Their
track record as a well-led and innovative
organisation resulted in NHS managers
working with Revival to design further
expanded HIA services.
Committed to excellent customer service,
as well as staff training and development,
the agency holds Investors in People Gold accreditation, ensuring staff are well-quipped,
developed and supported to deliver high-quality services. They also hold Investors in
Excellence and Foundations Quality Mark accreditations, and achieve 99% customer
satisfaction levels.
Yorkshire Housing HIAs - commended
Yorkshire Housing HIAs operate across
urban areas and rural communities and
are dedicated to supporting local people
and the local economy.
The HIAs have been proactive in making
service offers to the CCGs for
prevention, with innovative ideas such
as a GP prescription service providing
preventative handyperson and minor
adaptation works. Integrated into this
service is a hospital inpatient immediate
return home service, with the handyperson accompanying the hospital discharge team home
to carry out necessary works and ultimately reducing time spent in hospital.
Another example is the Falls Screening Pilot in Craven, where the local authority, Health and
CCG, with the HIA, carry out preventative screening to ensure that residents can remain
independent in their own homes safely. This service benefits from all the handypersons
being occupational therapy trusted assessors.
The Yorkshire Housing HIAs recognise the value of small interventions and have a
partnership with GPs where a caseworker is in the waiting rooms of surgeries with
information for patients.
Their services currently hold a 100% customer satisfaction rating.
Sponsored by:
Handyperson Service of the Year
Manchester Care & Repair - winner
The HIA’s handyperson team carried out
more than 7,000 jobs last year. However,
far from simply offering a small repairs
service, its staff work to a mantra of
‘making every visit count’. All are trained
to deliver a comprehensive assessment
for home safety and security and hold
level 3 City and Guilds qualifications in
Energy Awareness and are able to
deliver advice on energy efficiency and
fuel poverty. Over 90% of initial visits
lead to referrals to other services. More
than 99% of clients would use the service again and recommend it to others.
Refinements to working practices, streamlined processes and investment in the operatives’
training and development have led to significant improvements in productivity and thereby
Value for Money to commissioners.
Although the labour is free of charge, the HIA actively fundraises and has generated over
£17K of income in 2015-16 from fundraising activities and donations. In pursuit of
sustainability, the handyperson service actively seeks income generating opportunities from
complementary activity funded by sources outside the main commissioned service.
County Durham Handyperson Service - commended
The service offers a lifeline to thousands of
older people, delivering almost 14,000 tasks
last year despite its reduced size (8
handypersons). Last year 49% of services
were delivered to customers aged over 80,
many of whom do not have the support of
family members with small jobs and repairs
around the home.
To these customers a visit from a friendly
trusted Handyperson is vital.
With austerity affecting all aspects of the
public sector, the service successfully brought partners together and now a range of
Sponsored by:
organisations are contributing to the funding of the service: Durham County Council Children
and Adult Services, North Durham CCG and Durham Dales Easington and Sedgefield CCG,
Stronger Families initiative, Sensory Support and Telecare service.
In a major transformation of the service, handypersons are now using new technology and
software which enabled more accurate scheduling of work, more effective use of
handyperson time and reduced the administrative burden of processing that volume of work.
This has resulted in efficiencies of more than 30% and a customer satisfaction rating of 99%.
WE Care & Repair - commended
Without any increase in funding from local
commissioners, WE Care & Repair
managed to complete over 14,000
handyperson jobs in 2015/16 against a
target of 11,000; a third of which came
from referrals connected to health and
social care services/teams. The HIA
increased the number of jobs in 15/16 by
60%
compared
to
14/15
whilst
maintaining a free/low-cost service for
very vulnerable clients and decreasing by
two days the average time between
referral and job completion.
WE Care & Repair have a clearly defined set of standards for the service, and have recently
re-structured it to make it operationally more efficient. All operatives are trusted assessors
and they have plans for ‘Making Every Contact Count’, dedicated support to their Home from
Hospital work, and generating new sources of income.
The HIA holds around a dozen contracts with local commissioners, including the Royal
British Legion, to deliver a wide variety of jobs – child safety measures, support for exservice personnel, non-landlord repairs for City Council tenants, as well as a range of
services for self-funding clients.
Sponsored by:
Home Adaptations Service of the Year
Lancaster HIA - winner
The judges were impressed with
Lancaster HIA’s work to promote the use
of Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs) to
pay for adaptations and promote
independence. Together with local
authorities throughout Lancashire, the
city council drew up a DFG action plan in
order to improve access to the grants
and share good practice.
Lancaster HIA‘s caseworkers are
working with local health services
(including Macmillan team nurses, OTs, rehabilitation teams, rapid response team etc.) to
raise awareness of DFGs and the benefits of adaptations as well as tackle any delays in vital
support.
All minor adaptations are completed by the HIA’s handyperson team, with the majority of
adaptations being completed within one week from order. There are currently no waiting lists
for minor adaptations or works via DFGs and all cases are dealt with as priority.
Local residents are facing waiting times of up to 12 months for council OT assessments,
which has led to a drop in DFG referrals to the HIA. To overcome this, Lancaster HIA now
works with private OTs and assessments can be obtained within one week.
Sponsored by:
The ‘Innovation’ Award
Revival HIA - winner
Revival HIA’s nomination in the
‘Innovation’ category was for its hospital
discharge service. The local health
economy was experiencing significant
pressures because of high numbers of
delayed
discharges
from
and
readmissions to hospital.
Over the last five years, the HIA has not
only transformed the support vulnerable
people receive on leaving hospital, it is
also reducing the chances of
readmission and building stronger links between the HIA, health and social care
professionals and commissioners. Clients receive a hospital visit within two hours of referral,
full risk assessment, “meet & greet” on their return home and a dedicated handyperson to
carry out jobs needed to ensure safe discharge.
A 30-day follow-up service ensures patients’ ongoing wellbeing and independence, whilst
the agency’s Intensive Home Support Scheme aims to support vulnerable patients with more
intensive and complex needs. The hospital discharge service operates seven days per
week, to support patients discharged at weekends.
Last year Revival HIA supported 1,190 people home from hospital, with an average 82%
improved outcomes.
Peterborough Care & Repair - commended
Peterborough City Council commissioned
the Building Research Establishments
(BRE) to undertake a Quantitative Health
Impact Assessment of private sector
housing in Peterborough. The result has
enabled the HIA to access and to target
over £1 million of repairs assistance
funding to address the needs of the most
vulnerable local home owners. A further
tranche of research indicated that the
residents of the many local residential
Sponsored by:
home parks were most likely to be on fixed incomes, aged and in fuel poverty. Every park
home was canvassed directly by Care & Repair. Almost £500K of work to individual units
has been commissioned to improve the housing, health and the finance of the residents
(including external wall insulation and repairs project, such as electrical updates, boiler and
window replacements).
Last year Peterborough Care & Repair delivered more services, with fewer resources and at
less cost. Process mapping has been vital in identifying unnecessary steps to achieve
efficiencies. Preventative interventions are making savings earlier, preventing crisis,
enabling independence, and improving quality of life.
WE Care & Repair - commended
Over the last year West of England Care
& Repair came up with an innovative way
of delivering casework for people that
hoard. They identified a lack of support
from statutory/voluntary agencies in
hoarding cases, which meant they were
taking significant casework time and not
delivering the best outcomes for the
clients.
At this moment in Bristol there are 267
supportive tenancy management cases
alone related to hoarding by vulnerable tenants. To address the local need, the HIA
considered if volunteers could help hoarders ‘make space’ prior to more focused
casework/technical and handyperson work occurring. They designed a pilot based around
sensitive peer support to gradually help decluttering; the HIA then applied for funding,
sourced training, recruited volunteers and so the ‘Making Space’ project began.
The positive changes the ‘Making Space’ project seeks to achieve are not only the delivery
of essential house repairs and a reduced risk of fire, but also improved physical health
through regaining access to key facilities, improvement in confidence, wellbeing and social
inclusion due to the take-up or re-take-up of hobbies and interests. So far they have helped
in 15 cases.
Sponsored by:
The ‘Collaboration’ Award
Peterborough Care & Repair - winner
Peterborough Care & Repair delivers the
Local Authority’s entire Housing Capital
Grants programme which is focussed on
ensuring local people are warm, safe and
secure. Delivery is in partnership with
Social Care and Health Services. The
agency deals with 20,000 telephone calls
annually delivering 8,000 tangible
interventions including major & minor
disabled facility adaptations, assisted
technology, a free handyperson service
(3,600 jobs pa), Electrical Safety, Warm
Homes, Gas Safety Council funded work, heating replacements, Housing Health & Safety
Rating Inspections & Repairs.
The HIA is the hub of the Homes Service Delivery Model (HSDM), which is an approach to
care designed to improve or maintain people’s independence, support people to recover
from illness/injury and help people re-learn lost skills or abilities. It combines Care & Repair,
Re-ablement, Therapy, Assistive Technology and Hospital at Home and will align in future
with Intermediate Care Services.
This approach has delivered a number of positive outcomes, including the assessment of
needs and the home environment at the earliest point, personalised care and support, and a
joined-up customer service, irrespective of organisational boundaries.
Dorset Accessible Homes - commended
The HIA had the opportunity to cocreate their HIA service with Dorset
County Council and district partners to
innovate and develop the offering as
they supported the transition from
localised protocol to a holistic countywide service.
This Collaborative HIA model brings
together a number of services,
historically operating as standalone
Sponsored by:
services, such as: OT assessments, two independent living centres, telecare services, HIA
and handyperson services, retail offering (self-assessment and e-commerce), Warm Homes
initiatives, DFGs etc.
Holistic in design and combining a number of key preventative services, this approach
creates a joined-up delivery, offering greater benefit to the community such as one
assessment, one referral route and one footfall across the door. Working from a single client
record, they can support needs from low level telecare right through to major adaptations
and the HIA’s services are accessible and used by partners and prescribers across all three
sectors.
A unique benefit realisations study has demonstrated that these interventions have already
saved over £150,000 in year one, therefore reducing pressure on budgets, hospitals and
acute care interventions.
Homelife Carlisle - commended
The HIA has piloted a Health and Social
Care Coordinators (HSCC) project funded
by the Clinical Commissioning Group. The
HSCC role forms part of the building
blocks of an ‘Out of Hospital’ Primary
Care Strategy. GPs and health
professionals identify vulnerable patients
who could benefit from a proactive careplanning approach combining both social
and medical prescribing.
As well as NHS outcomes, the project is
part of the local Carlisle Care Home Team and contributes to overall local targeted reduction
in unscheduled admissions and locality savings forecast £1.5m. The overall aim of the
project is to prevent admissions and pressure on health and social care by linking clients
with all services available in their community, involving the third-sector and housing.
Each client is assisted differently - examples include being a life-line and a link until a care
package is in place, memory matters group, Zumba, food-banks and shopping. The HIA give
housing options advice and liaise with the homelessness team regarding house moves and
applying for grants to assist with heating and electrical work.
Sponsored by:
Most Influential Agency Award
Ealing HIA has made a great contribution
to the sector as a whole, having
supported Foundations’ work on
numerous occasions.
The agency has used its membership of
the borough’s Older People’s Partnership
Board to engage with the NHS, public
health, the third sector, clinical
commissioning group and social services
and ensure the HIA’s work is widely
understood and adequately funded. They
are a leading edge agency that has consistently supported neighbouring HIAs to lever
support through the Better Care Fund.
FILT Delivery Partner of the Year Award
Agency Award
Homelife Carlisle not only has an
impressive track record of performance
across a range of FILT programmes, but
in doing so achieved and often exceeded
targets. The HIA has consistently gone
out of its way to identify, reach and
provide solutions for people facing the
challenge of living in cold homes or
unsafe housing – and to provide a
tailored solution to meet the specific
needs of each of those people. They
have a dedicated (if small) team driven to
do whatever it takes, with a genuine person-centred approach. They are well connected
locally for to/from local referral pathways.
Homelife Carlisle has also continued to provide an excellent service even in the aftermath of
the devastating floods last December – being a key player not only at the time of emergency
but in the weeks and months that have followed.
Sponsored by: