Official Report 241KB pdf
We should now move to agenda item 2, but we cannot do so, as the witnesses are not yet here. Let us move instead to agenda item 4.
Can you alter a published agenda?
The alternative is to sit here until somebody arrives.
I think that we will have to do that. I know people who will want to be present for consideration of the petitions.
We shall check whether everyone has arrived.
Some people will not be here until 11.30.
Is it the case that the people from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations are not here? Is that why we cannot progress?
Not all the witnesses have arrived yet. Half of them are here, so we can go ahead with those who are here.
Thank you very much. I want to thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to give evidence to it. I am David Orr, the director of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.
I am David Bookbinder, membership and policy officer at the SFHA, with responsibility for community care issues. As I have also recently taken up an internal secondment as the housing bill officer, the committee might see me in a different guise in a year or so.
I am Andrew McKay, secretary of the SFHA's housing and community care forum. Until recently, I was the community care manager with Hanover (Scotland) Housing Association. I am now policy manager with Port of Leith Housing Association.
I am Hilary Spenceley, business development director with Margaret Blackwood Housing Association. I am closely involved in the SFHA's housing and community care forum. When we made a written submission to the committee, I was chair of that forum. I also spent a year on secondment to Scottish Homes and was involved in producing its community care policy.
Andrew and I will make some short introductory comments, after which we will be happy to answer the committee's questions.
I am sure that housing association practitioners are no different from the rest of us, in that we are concerned about the dignity of people who are affected by disability and frailty and about the choices that are open to them. We want people to be able to remain in their own homes, wherever that is possible and practical. However, that is often not happening, particularly with older people. The number of people who go into nursing care is still high and—from a practice point of view—we see a fairly confusing funding picture for people whose care is provided in their own homes. The provision of community care services varies throughout the country. We want a simple funding situation, in which care is affordable and available—preferably free—to all those who need it, regardless of whether the care is delivered in a residential home or people's own homes.
Thank you for coming along today. You have highlighted the major problems that have been raised by other organisations. Implementation of the Sutherland report is, essentially, the way in which we can move forward on care in the community.
The merging of housing and social work is one of the reasons there is better co-ordination. There are obvious examples, such as the hospital closure programme, in which—certainly in the latter stages—the commissioning of housing has been crucial. The teams that are responsible for re-provisioning for people who come out of the big institutions have had to liaise properly at a very early stage with housing providers—both the local housing authority and housing associations. The hospital discharge programme has improved relations, at least latterly. It has had to, because houses have had to be found for people.
The provision of aids and adaptations has been an on-going problem for a number of years. I know from my professional background that the real problem is the shortage of occupational therapists and the consequent waiting times. Have you any evidence that the situation is improving?
It is patchy. There are areas where our members say that getting a visit from an OT is not a problem. There are other areas where members say that the OT service is far too hard-pressed and tenants wait quite a few months for a visit to assess their circumstances, never mind to apply for funding and so on. I wish I could say that there was no evidence of a shortage of OT services, but there are areas where our members tell us that it takes a long time.
OT services in hospitals are crucial for moving people into appropriate accommodation after a hospital stay. What is the situation regarding assessments by hospital OT departments?
As far as I am aware, the worst problems are with social work occupational therapy teams, which are hard-pressed.
Are those community based?
More often than not. The problem is not so much that hospital assessments are delayed, but that the housing solution may not be available. My colleague Hilary Spenceley may want to add something about that, because of the client group with which Margaret Blackwood Housing Association deals.
We have experience of acute hospital beds being occupied inappropriately by people for more than a year after they are ready for discharge simply because appropriately adapted housing is not available in the community. That goes back to David Orr's point about adequate capital resources for housing, whether for new-build, refurbishment, remodelling or adaptation.
I have spoken about the merger in many areas between housing and social work. The other component is health. It has been said that relationships between housing and health have been problematic. What kind of difficulties have you experienced in your dealings with the health service?
There are no particular difficulties at practitioner level. What is sometimes lacking is the structures that let health colleagues meet housing colleagues regularly.
There is a further structural problem to do with budgets and budgeting. There may be agreement in principle among three different agencies that a new service is necessary and on how it will be paid for, but come February, when the nuts and bolts of the budget are being debated, one of the partners will say, "We have had to take that out of the budget." Again, these are not practitioner issues. They are structural issues about priorities and lead to considerable uncertainty for the people who need to use the service and for the landlord, who might have a building developed on the understanding that there will be a care and support package only to find that a key part of it disappears at the last moment.
Have you been party to any resource transfer of funds from the health boards, or do you rely totally on it coming through the local authority?
A lot of the provision that housing associations make is as a result of resource transfer moneys from the hospital closure programme. That is quite widespread. Sometimes, general housing associations make available a few houses for people who have care services coming in.
Are those long-term contracts?
Yes. One of the key areas of concern that has come out of Professor Petch's recent work with Scottish Homes on the housing aspects of the hospital closure programme is that, while the decommissioning of hospitals might, for instance, result in four or five people with learning disabilities sharing a home together, no provision has been made for what might happen a few years down the line when one or two of them feel ready to move into a house of their own or with only one friend. There is a certain anxiety about short-termism and whether the funding that was available through resource transfer will be available when people have the confidence to move on.
Would the resources be held by the health board and released to you under contract? What happens with the local authority? As you know, the money is transferred and the local authority determines how it is used. Although the health board is, technically, still responsible, the Accounts Commission has told us that the health board is unable to see what happens to the money.
Day-to-day control of the money is the responsibility of the commissioning body, which is usually the social work department.
Would you like resource transfer money to go directly to housing associations on a long-term basis?
That might be appropriate. A number of things should work together to create a clear and transparent funding structure. It would be welcome if that involved resource transfer from health. We have got housing support elements that we have provided and that have been provided through housing benefit. Those will have to dovetail with the social services' personal care budgets that local authorities have.
To clarify the situation, resource transfer kicks in where wards or hospitals are being closed. Mainly, it concerns people with learning difficulties and so on, but does not have an impact on elderly people, who are dependent on local authority funding to move from hospital to more appropriate circumstances.
I can only speak about the example in which I was involved. There was an accounting practice whereby money was transferred from health to social work as the beds closed. That money was then used to form a contract with a housing provider. Once the contract period is finished, one has to examine arrangements for the future. Six or 10 years on, the people who benefited from the transfer will perhaps have died. It is the people who come after who are important. There will be a generation coming after that, traditionally, would have gone into long-term hospital care. Through adapted housing and proper care, managed in suitable packages, we are trying to remove the requirement to choose a hospital or nursing home as the first port of call. We want clearly funded arrangements for care and good co-operation between housing, health and social work so that we can make that case to families and individuals.
On resource transfer, it has been raised in evidence that there are huge differences between the health boards. A bed can be anything from £8,000 to £32,000. Do you have any evidence of wide variations in the amount that is transferred? I see Hilary Spenceley smiling at that.
It is a question of scale and the number of beds that are closing. Is a whole ward closing? Are people being discharged as part of a big closure programme or on more of a drip-feed basis? It is right to say that resource transfer is patchy across the country.
I am very sympathetic to your suggestions about ring fencing, but I am also aware that local authorities and health boards do not like money to be ring-fenced. What are your views on that?
The starting point for us is that the money that is currently paid in housing benefit through the Department of Social Security and the money that is paid by Scottish Homes in the special needs allowance package is specific. We know exactly where that money will go and it is all tracked and traceable; indeed, many housing associations complain about the amount of bureaucracy that is involved in tracking that money. It would be very unfortunate if that money, which is already insufficient, were repackaged and delivered in such a way that there was a possibility of leakage. We are aware of the pressures on local authorities and the demands made on their resources, but when there is a clear resource transfer from one organisation to another to deliver the same service but to do so in a more coherent way, that needs to be identified as clearly as possible.
Thank you. It is helpful to put that on the record. My question is about the barriers that housing associations face in the provision of housing for people with special needs. Your introductory remarks and the comments that you have made have pointed us in the direction of a number of issues, such as structural and planning issues, joint working between agencies and the effect that that can have on inflation proofing and ring fencing of moneys. Are there other issues that you have not already covered that you want to draw to the committee's attention in relation to barriers?
The main barrier is that the funding for people who wish to stay at home in a tenancy-based situation is complex and needs to be sorted out. I hope that from the examples in our submission we have shown that we can help through sitting down with local authorities and managing the process of who does what to make sure that the support that people need in housing developments is efficient and effective. We have a responsibility to do that, as do local authorities.
I appreciate the appendices that you provided, which give good examples of joint working and partnership. Do you have any examples of failures in the system when that has broken down? One of your colleagues mentioned someone being inappropriately placed in care for a year. Do you have any other examples? For instance, you provide housing. Do you find that sometimes the care package falls down once people are rehoused?
That has been an issue. If you like, I am sure that we could produce some illustrative examples.
That would be helpful for the committee.
We can do that, and put together a little package of some of the details behind the issue as well.
That would be helpful.
When capital is available from Scottish Homes and when we are able to work jointly with local authorities, it seems like those who get allocated houses are the lucky ones. We are well aware that the failures may be the many who are not lucky enough to get allocated to the success stories that we have highlighted. There are still people who end up going into large-scale nursing homes who might not choose that, or who go into hospital when it is not appropriate. Perhaps we should look at those if we are looking at failures.
For most elderly people, their aspiration is independent living in their own home, but that will only work if you have the additional care that is required as well as the housing. I am aware that you have established a good reputation in your housing associations for providing those special needs houses, but that has to be pursued in partnership with care. It would be interesting for us to know about examples that have worked well, but also to know about examples where there have been difficulties and barriers.
Okay.
I would like to address the proposals for supporting people. That was an important part of your presentation and you have covered it in some depth already. I agree with you on ring fencing, but I wish to explore it further. Ring fencing seems to have been going on for a long time. I remember being in committees and discussing this issue straight after the 1997 election, and now we have a date of 2003. What has happened in the transitional period? I know that you said then that there was housing waiting to be occupied and that it would no longer be able to be occupied. Has that happened, or have you had protection in the interim period?
One key step that has happened in the past few months is that from 1 April this year the transitional housing benefit scheme has come into being. It is a three-year tideover until the money is transferred to local authorities in 2003. That has the potential to end what was, as you said, ineffective and a blight as providers were unable to make new provision, because the money was not there for the tenancy support that they might have wanted to provide. It is now fundable if, for example, an organisation wanted to set up a visiting support service for young, formerly homeless, people who are in their first tenancies and might be struggling to keep those tenancies going. That sort of service could be established and funded by the transitional housing benefit scheme. In 2003, the money will be transferred to the local authority. That has been a welcome step.
There is the same issue about planning blight on the horizon in 2003, unless growth funding is addressed in the supporting people scenario.
I was going to ask about that. In a sense I agree with you about ring fencing, that growth is what is required, but are you confident that there will be no leakage, as it were, so that by the time it is transferred everything that was covered by the previous regime will be covered by the transfer? I suppose that the immediate question is whether the interim arrangements cover everything that has been lost so far.
The interim arrangements are fine and have been welcomed. We have moved from a situation where an individual's right to the money through housing benefit has been replaced by a system of a specific block grant. Any growth caused by the aging population, increase in disability and so on will have to be taken into account by the new grant, because of the different mechanism. There will be opportunities, when the money is transferred, to move towards a more simple funding mechanism, but there will also be threats in that the total pot might be less and may be shrinking.
You are worried about a shrinking pot. Obviously this relates to how housing budgets are going but, in that aspect of the housing budget, would you say that it has not been a shrinking pot over the past three years, or would that be going too far?
We have welcomed the guidance on the tasks that have entitlement for the eligibility for the transitional housing benefit. That has included most of the tasks in housing support that we have been carrying out. The protection has been there.
So everyone is getting the support that they had before. What about the number of people who are getting support? Is that the issue if the pot shrinks? Would it mean less support or fewer people getting that support?
We are confident that everyone who is currently getting tenancy support in one way or another will carry on receiving that support after 1 April 2003. No changes are likely to be made to the support that people receive until the local authority has carried out a full review of that service. There will be protection mechanisms. Our real worry is about what will come after.
The key problem is that, at present, housing benefit is an entitlement—if a person fits the criteria, they get the benefit. That means that if there are 10 people who are entitled to housing benefit this year, at a cost of £100, that is the amount of money that goes to the local authority. However, that is to become a grant; it will become a fixed sum of money. That means that it will be £100 next year, even if there are 15 people who require support, whereas currently, if 15 people required that support, they would get the money because they were entitled and housing benefit is not cash limited.
That was very helpful.
I am a wee bit concerned about the security of tenure for people who are moved into housing because they have special needs. They will have contracts that are nothing like tenancy contracts and which may stipulate that they should be out of bed by 10 o'clock in the morning and so on. Could you explain why they do not have the same security of tenure?
Increasingly, such people have the same security of tenure. There are some restrictions. However, the advice that SFHA gives its members is that everyone should have a proper assured tenancy agreement, or its equivalent. There are particular circumstances where that is not the case. I can go into detail on that if you like. However, there is an increasing use of proper tenancy agreements, rather than occupancy agreements or other, less formal arrangements.
Could you put something in writing on that matter?
Certainly. It is quite a detailed issue.
That would be very helpful.
Just before I go into question 5, I would like to say that I was pleased to hear what David Orr had to say on housing benefit and the possibility that there will be no automatic benefit entitlement in future. That was a key point that the lenders who appeared before the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee made in connection with the Glasgow housing stock transfer. They pointed out that 80 per cent of Glasgow tenants are on benefits and that, if anything happened to threaten those benefits, the deal might be threatened.
All right, but can you move on to the question?
Yes, I will—but that issue is crucial to sheltered housing, too. Could the witnesses outline any recent developments in design that are relevant to the housing contribution to community care? Could they also comment on the location of sheltered housing? To boost schools, some authorities have a policy of encouraging only young families into certain areas—areas that may also be near shops, for example. Older people are rather cut out.
We have increasingly seen the building of barrier-free housing—we have come to call it very sheltered or extra-care housing—which can be used by people who are even more frail than people in sheltered housing. Such barrier-free housing is characterised by wheelchair-accessible bathrooms with wet-floor areas and showering so that people can, with the help of community nursing and personal care, stay put. Helping people to stay put has been a key issue of late in sheltered housing. In the past, people have had to move on because there was not enough personal care and because certain aspects of the design were not appropriate. The vast majority of the sheltered housing that has been built in the past 10 or 12 years has been barrier free and appropriate for people as they develop physical disabilities.
That is not so easy in certain authority areas. Some authorities have policies for areas into which they want to bring young couples to boost the schools. That is perfectly natural. However, areas with a lot of shops and facilities are absolutely ideal for the elderly.
Those are prime sites.
The elderly have fewer cars, which causes fewer problems.
I agree.
David Orr said that there were variations across the country in the funding system and support for capital investment. Could our witnesses give us some more information on that variation and on the support for adaptation projects and capital investment across Scotland? Where is the money coming from?
One of the key pieces of feedback that we get from members—I suspect that my colleagues may wish to supplement this—is that the provision of housing, and especially new housing, in any one area is very patchy. A lot of the community care programme uses existing housing, which is fine, but there will always be a need for new housing—not least because the new housing provided by housing associations is generally built to barrier-free standards. Inevitably, the capital resources that we would all like to see are not available through the Scottish Homes programme. That means, for example, that people who come out of hospital do not always find that there are developments in the areas that they come from and would like to go back to. That has held up the chances of people moving to where they would like to move. I know that that is a problem that the Margaret Blackwood Housing Association has come across.
There are conflicting priorities across the country for funding from Scottish Homes. Much of that funding is going into urban regeneration, which is not necessarily the best location for housing for people with particular needs. Scottish Homes recognises that there can be provision of such housing elsewhere. However, priorities must be balanced and those of us who are especially involved in community care are not always seen as a priority. It is welcome that Scottish Homes has agreed to give priority to funding adaptations, but the theory and the practice differ around the country.
May I put this issue in context? At the time of the 1997 general election, the forward-planned housing budget in Scotland was about at its lowest, in real terms, since the war. Last year, the development programme of Scottish Homes was the lowest in the 10 years of the organisation's existence—it is marginally higher this year. Public sector investment in housing generally is at historically low levels, although some additional investment has been made in housing, through the new housing partnership programme predominantly and in one or two other areas, such as the very small increase in the development programme.
From the anecdotal evidence of people at surgeries, or from letters and so on, we know of situations where people are being kept in a hospital bed for the want of a stairlift or adaptations made to a bathroom, which involve relatively small amounts of money. A hospital bed for one week can cost more than the adaptation that is needed to get people back into their own home and with their own family.
I think that the answer is yes, although—
Is there a hidden issue? Are people paying for items privately because they do not think that they could get them from Scottish Homes, local authorities or other sources?
I suspect that the answer is yes, although I do not know whether my colleagues have any evidence to support that suspicion.
There is certainly some supporting evidence from those of our members that operate care-and-repair projects. As committee members may know, those projects are aimed primarily at older people who own their own houses. There is some evidence that the chances of getting adaptations money from local housing or social work departments are poor. That is particularly the case where, because of the authority's hard-pressed resources and the balancing act that it must perform, there is a greater tendency for it to prioritise funding adaptations for its own tenants, rather than those of private owners, as David Orr said.
I have visited the care-and-repair organisations—there is one in Aberdeenshire, one in Glasgow and one in Perth. Could you expand on the value of broadening that service? From what I have seen, the provision of care and repair is too patchy. Some local authorities use it, whereas others do not—in some authorities it does not exist. Is there a role for care and repair to play in the future, perhaps within a larger, more co-ordinated organisation?
Yes, care and repair could play an expanded role. A national strategy has begun and the wish has been expressed that there should be at least one care-and-repair service in every local authority area in Scotland. We are getting closer to that, although we are not there yet.
So there are separate pots of money for local authority tenants, housing association tenants and private tenants.
Care-and-repair funding is local government money that is agreed with the Executive and channelled through care-and-repair agencies to provide assistance to elderly owner-occupiers. Aids and adaptations funding for housing association tenants and local authority tenants comes from elsewhere.
That is the point that I wanted to make. Do you think that, rather than our having different pots from which funding is issued, the priority should be assessed need, wherever the person comes from? In my constituency, last year, although there was money left in one of those pots and demand in another area, there was no possibility of transferring the money. People were waiting on one list and not waiting on another list, but we could not get the money into the right place. Is there not a crying need for the different areas to be jointly assessed and for the care-and-repair budgets to be channelled through a joint grouping or a single fund?
There is no doubt that there must be improved co-ordination, although I am not sure whether a single fund is the best mechanism. The responsibility of landlords to maintain their stock is different from the responsibilities that a local authority has to provide grant support to elderly owner-occupiers. More work needs to be done on the specific delivery mechanisms. You are correct to say that, on occasions, one pot is empty and another is overflowing, but there is no coherent way of putting the two together—that is nonsense.
Could I make an additional point, convener?
No, we must move on. Margaret Jamieson will ask question 7.
I am aware of some of the innovative planning work that is being undertaken by housing associations. In my constituency, Horizon Housing Association, the local health board, the primary care trust and the local authority have designed housing that will open up channels for a significant number of individuals with special needs by allowing them to be discharged from hospital. That has long been in the pipeline in Ayrshire, but the level of barrier-free in that development has not been replicated throughout Scotland, as far as I am aware. Could we replicate that template throughout Scotland?
There have been welcome changes to the building regulations that will require new housing, except in exceptional circumstances, to be visitable.
I knew that there was a word, but I could not remember it.
Those changes may not go as far as some of us would like. Margaret Jamieson makes the important point that barrier-free housing is not adequate for the needs of some people. There is no doubt that more specialist housing needs to be designed so that people who use wheelchairs can make full and independent use of it—so that they can cook, bathe and so on.
I remember having a discussion with the sales director of a major building company in Scotland about barrier-free design. That person told me that, if the company spent £500 on installing a kitchen, it could add £1,000 to the cost of the house. If it spent £500 on making accommodation barrier free, that money was lost, because it could not add anything to the cost of the house. From the company's perspective, that is a problem, but it is also a ridiculous situation. The reason that barrier-free costs more is that it is deemed to be non-standard. If it were standard, it would not cost any more. We need to ensure that barrier-free becomes a standard house design. If we do that, it will not cost any more and life will be much easier, not just for people who use wheelchairs, but for the mother with a double buggy trying to get in. It is ridiculous to have doors that are not wide enough for a double buggy.
Or too heavy to open.
Exactly. Some basic things could be done that would not cost money, if we could only change attitudes.
Can your associations provide an alternative model of provision to the traditional method of residential and nursing homes? I know that you have small pockets of such provision, but can they be widened?
Yes. In one of the appendices to our submission there is an example of people moving, with the help of the local community council and local families, from an existing well-loved residential home that was due to close into new tenancies where day care and community health services are provided on site. That means that people have gone from being looked after to having their own tenancies and all the rights and responsibilities that go with that. The association has helped people to become tenants once more, and the local authority is providing the care.
Are there no other ways in which they could be financed, such as through a public-private partnership?
For housing associations to build housing with rents that are affordable, they need grant from somewhere. If they did not get that, they would have to charge a market rent. Increasingly, however, housing associations are using their own resources and are resorting to creative ways of raising money through lenders—building societies and banks. About a third of the funding for the scheme that I described came from the association, a third came from Scottish Homes and a third came from the council. That is how progress can be made.
Is there no opportunity to educate companies such as Barratt, Wimpey and Stewart Milne about what the needs are and what can be provided?
Several associations, including mine, are working with builders to adapt standard house designs. We would like houses to be provided in the private sector, so that owner-occupiers can have a suitable house and can access flexible care packages. We also want house builders to provide rented housing in partnership with housing associations.
Mr Orr, could you clarify the difference between housing support and care?
There are detailed schedules to explain that but, basically, housing support covers the things that enable people to manage their tenancies. That includes understanding budgeting, paying the rent and other basic housing management issues. Most of us manage those things on our own without any support, but some people require external support to be able to cope. What we call care covers more personal care support services.
On page 1 of your submission you make three points, the first of which concerns the provision of housing and making arrangements for care with another agency. The second point concerns housing and related services, where care is provided by social workers. The third point, as I understand it, covers provision of housing support and care. Some housing associations provide care, have staff who provide care and extend that to provide care services in the wider community. What would be the advantage of a tenant having a housing association that provided care staff and care services? Do you feel that it is better for the client, the patient, or whatever we call them, to get those services from you instead of from others?
A small number of housing associations in Scotland have developed as housing and care agencies and have the necessary expertise in delivering services. They are able to provide the complete package and they provide a good and supportive environment for people to live in. A larger number of housing associations have real expertise in housing and housing-related support services but do not have expertise in providing care and do not wish to develop that expertise. They prefer to contract with the local authority or other care agencies to provide that care.
I knew about housing support, but I had not thought of housing associations as providing care services. Is there an example of good practice in that in Scotland?
There are several. The Craw Wood dementia project in the Borders, run by Eildon Housing Association, is a good example of joined-up care and housing. It was provided when a long-term psychiatric ward for older people was closed. There are other examples throughout the country.
On the theme of partnership, are any of your housing associations involved with the local health care co-operatives?
That is a developing area. The only evidence that I can currently give you is that some of our members have found that local health care co-operatives have become involved in local housing and community care forum meetings about adaptations or a new-build project. However, it is still early days for such relationships and I do not have any firm evidence.
I want to ask a supplementary. As you know, my concerns centre mainly on joint working. In the example of the Eildon Housing Association, staff were transferred from Dingleton hospital; I was glad to see that you received advice on the matter from the dementia centre at the University of Stirling, which is in my constituency.
Although I am not aware of such a requirement, it sounds like good practice. We have experienced such situations throughout the country. As tenants choose their own general practitioner, a development's location might mean extra calls on a doctor's surgery, health visitors and district nurses. As a result, local authorities have talked about community occupational therapy.
That point applies to all areas of community care. Although residential homes are the same, there needs to be more joint planning on the allocation of resources to ensure that tenants are given adequate support from the health service as well.
I agree. In specialist associations such as the Hanover (Scotland) Housing Association development in Moray—which is mentioned in the appendix—there will be a steering group with places for a primary care and nurse care manager. Such provision has been valuable. Although it can be very difficult for doctors to attend, it is important for the practice nurse care manager to attend steering group meetings and to keep people appraised of what is happening.
Can you offer an assessment of the value-for-money implications of different arrangements and partnerships? What would offer the best value for money and quality of service?
It is difficult to say that one form of service delivery automatically, because of its structure, provides better value for money than another. Although a housing association with the expertise to provide care might provide very good value for money, if we said that that association provided the best model, that might lead to other associations without such expertise trying to develop it and providing a poorer-quality service with poorer value for money as a result. It is important to develop local solutions that bring together various properly planned components that are delivered by people with the appropriate expertise.
I appreciate that, but we, as the Health and Community Care Committee, are considering the national, rather than the local, picture. We are looking to you to give us a lead on the best quality provision, the best working partnerships and the best value for money.
As housing providers, we are perhaps reluctant to comment on what is best value for money; it should be the users who do that. Take the example of five or six people with learning disabilities, who are living together following a hospital closure; it would be more expensive to provide three small flats, in each of which a couple of them live with a friend, than one group home. If, however, some years into their tenancy in a smaller, self-contained flat, you were to ask them what value for money means for them, they would say that it means the independence and empowerment that they get from having their own tenancy, rather than what sometimes happens, which is that after a hospital closure, people find themselves pushed into living with five or six others.
Does the federation feel that flexibility and adaptability would be appropriate? Elderly people in particular can be on a plateau for quite some time, but can then take a bit of a dip. Flexible and adaptable provision could take account of that dip, and would mean that they would not have to move home because their accommodation could cope with their needs. If their arthritis got worse, they could still take a bath and so on. Would you find such principles useful?
Yes, very much so. I draw your attention to appendix 3 in the examples. Fifteen flats were provided to replace equivalent provision in a long-stay residential home that was costly and needed to close. Provision of the flats produced significant cash savings at the end of the day; that reflects your point. Not everybody needed the high level of intensive care that was available all the time in the home, yet the way in which the home was staffed and structured meant that the care was there all the time.
The terminology we are using now is person-centred as opposed to top-down. Our approach is built around the individual.
This is an appropriate point to ask about best practice. You have described the need to have local solutions and flexibility. Presumably, that diversity does not mean that there are no minimum benchmarks against which the housing association's performance can be measured. I see the examples of good practice in the appendices—that is useful. The committee would be interested to know about the internal performance management of the housing associations that are involved in community care.
I will start by making two comments about the standards. Last year, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, in conjunction with Scottish Homes, issued standards on the provision of supported accommodation and housing with support to all housing associations. One part of those standards dealt with the tenancy arrangements that we expect to be in place when making provision with particular support needs. The arrangements should generally not be inferior to those that any person who does not have support rights gets as tenancy rights.
What exactly is the status of the guidelines? Are they simply guidelines, or to what extent are they enforced or monitored?
Minimum standards are clearly set out at the beginning of the guidelines that we produced last year. We would be delighted to send the committee a copy of those guidelines. The minimum standards are not for negotiation, and those are the minimum standards that Scottish Homes performance auditors would be considering. Thereafter, it is partly a simple matter of good practice.
Thank you; that was useful. On a related question, what mechanisms are in place for the sharing of best practice information? There is a sense in which too much diversity can lead to a fractured system. Are the right mechanisms in place for discussion and a forum?
The federation's housing and community care forum plays a key role. The forum involves regular meetings not just of housing associations, but of a range of voluntary sector providers, such as the Richmond Fellowship Scotland and Penumbra, which is involved in supported accommodation, local authority housing departments or social work departments, and Scottish Homes people who are involved in the delivery of community care.
Is stock transfer likely to have an impact on the general availability of housing for community care needs? Are there any other general housing developments that are likely to impact on the ability to respond to community care needs? I know that you have covered some of that on the capital side.
There are huge opportunities with stock transfer. One of the reasons behind stock transfer is to allow properties to be refurbished and brought up to a good condition. It is a great opportunity to do something about community care at the same time. I am concerned that that opportunity may be missed if the issue does not come higher up the political agenda.
Are you saying that there is not a group looking at that at the moment?
Latterly, as well as looking at how homeless provision will be looked after post-stock transfer, the federation has worked with local authorities to draw up a model contract for local housing authority community care responsibilities after stock transfer. For example, if a local authority is in the habit of making available 20 houses a year, scattered throughout the authority, to a particular voluntary organisation, so that that voluntary organisation can provide for people with learning disabilities, will that agreement be respected post-stock transfer? If such arrangements were to lapse after stock transfer, that would be a major blow for housing provision for the community care programme. We are looking at model contracts, which would tie the recipient landlord into respecting and, I hope, expanding such arrangements.
You have both referred to expansion. I agree entirely that the stock transfer provides an opportunity through a new refurbishment programme to upgrade standards of accommodation by, for example, using ground-floor flats to give proper access to people with disabilities and people in wheelchairs. That has not been tried before. Do you need a further mechanism? Do you need us to recommend anything to push that forward?
There is a fundamental shortage of capital investment for new-build housing. Stock transfer and the new housing partnership programme, which involves some new build at present, will help by improving the quality of the stock, but that is not sufficient. There will be occasions when new build is required. Until we are able to increase the basic amount of funding going in, we will continue to have difficulties.
Receiving landlords will have to outline their plans for homelessness. It would be helpful if they were asked to prepare an equivalent statement about community care and people with disabilities.
That is helpful. Thank you.
I assume that you are talking about mass housing stock transfer, not the usual transfer of fewer than 3,000 houses, which Scottish Homes would have handled in the past. I assume also that you are aware that a considerable number of people, in places such as Glasgow, are very concerned about the deal and think that it might be a disaster for the homeless, as well as possibly affecting care in the community—15,000 houses are likely to be demolished under the Glasgow plan alone, which happens to be the biggest one.
Can we have a question, Dorothy-Grace?
Are you looking at any alternatives to mass housing stock transfer, or are you totally committed to and enthusiastic about it, without studying the alternatives? Local authority control would save at least £200 million in VAT up front, which this deal will not.
The question basically is, are there any viable alternatives to the stock transfer programme?
The mass stock transfer programme.
We have looked at lots of different ways of bringing as much investment into housing as we possibly can. The transfer programme creates an opportunity to bring in investment, which no other programme would allow us to do. If we try to separate the politics out of it, and consider the pragmatics, the stock transfer programme could lead to an investment of £3 billion or £4 billion in poor quality Scottish housing. To that extent, we are supportive of it.
Okay. Kay Ullrich has another question.
Will this be the final question?
There will be a supplementary to it.
My question concerns nimbyism, which is always a problem when housing for people with special needs is being established. Are there any measures that may help that you would like to be implemented?
The extent of nimbyism should be reduced as the number of large projects reduces. For instance, where people with a history of mental illness are being housed in scattered tenancies, one would not expect the community to be involved. Often, communities focus on the areas in which a visible project is being built, and their opposition is less accentuated where there are ordinary tenancies.
It is essential that there is consultation that involves the neighbours and the community. You said that there could be behind-the-scenes work for the small developments and scattered tenancies. What is your practice? Do you have a standard practice when you put anybody with special needs into a community setting?
We put the emphasis on working quietly and using the care-providing agency. The care-providing agency often has expertise that the housing provider would not pretend to have in dealing with such matters, and works behind the scenes with neighbours instead of having a large public meeting. Such meetings do not create the right kind of atmosphere.
The large public meetings are usually held as a result of a lack of communication and consultation.
It is difficult to get the balance right. We work on the assumption that people deserve the opportunity to live in an ordinary house in an ordinary neighbourhood. Before I move into a new neighbourhood, I do not expect to have to consult the neighbours. The rights of the people who are moving in should be considered, as well as the rights of their neighbours. I do not believe that there should be an automatic right to consultation.
What do you mean by a large-scale development?
The kind of development that we think will generally not be required any longer.
I asked only because, at a recent public meeting in my constituency, I learned of the problems that had arisen because of a lack of consultation. I understand what you say about small developments but, from my recent experience, I am aware that it is better to inform and engage local people if you want to make such developments a success.
Some of the developing examples involve groups of current tenants. For example, Key Housing Association, which operates nationally from a Glasgow base, has a range of tenant forums where people with learning disabilities feed in information on the types of housing support and care support that they receive. That is infinitely more successful and positive than any complaints system. Generally, complaints systems do not produce that kind of feedback. Key Housing Association uses the information in the development of its newer housing support services and housing provision. It uses as its base existing tenants. It is certainly more difficult to identify a more amorphous kind of population. Most associations harness the views, knowledge and expertise of people whom they already house.
Thank you, not only for the answers that you have given to the variety of questions that we have asked, but for your written submission. We will probably address some of the other points that you have raised and ask you for further written evidence to back up what you have said today.
Meeting adjourned.
On resuming—
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