Supported living in the East Riding
Definitions of supported living vary, and it is a term used to describe a combination of housing and care/support options for people with different adult social care and health needs. Supported living is a health and care offer that sits in between the offers of care visits to someone’s home, which could be personal care or unregulated care and support, and registered care homes. Supported living in the context of this market position statement refers to long term housing solutions where the housing and care/support are provided by separate organisations.
Some people in supported living will require high levels of support and have complex needs. Other people will need less support and be very independent. We want supported living in the East Riding to focus on providing a home for people where they are supported to be independent and make their own choices about how they live their life and not a small institutional setting where their life is dictated by what is best for the provider.
Demands and Needs
What we know:
- We know that a person’s housing and health and wellbeing are closely linked
- At the time of writing, we know there are approximately 300 people in long term supported living settings across the East Riding. We are currently compiling our current and future demand data.
- There are many people with learning disabilities, autism, physical disabilities, and mental health needs on the councils housing waiting list.
- Most of the supported living in the East Riding is older shared accommodation where tenants don’t have their own front door.
- We know more people want to be able to live in their own home rather than residential care and need more supported living for this to be achieved.
- The East Riding is a large geographical area with many rural areas and that can make it challenging for people to be able live exactly where they want. It can also make it more challenging for housing providers and care providers to offer supported living in some areas.
- There are 76 supported living schemes in the East Riding of Yorkshire, providing accommodation for up to 328 people. The vast majority (60%) of accommodation is made up of converted shared housing. There are currently 14 vacancies, across 11 supported living schemes.
- There are currently 297 tenants living in supported living schemes in the East Riding of Yorkshire that have their care and support funded by either ERYC (252), Health (17) or are joint funded (28). Of the 297 tenants, 240 have a primary support reason as Learning Disability, 45 as Mental Health and 12 as Physical Disability.
- We have 21 CQC registered care and support providers, 2 are rated outstanding by the CQC, 18 good and 1 requires improvement. All are registered as domiciliary care providers.
- We have 33 different housing providers (landlords), of which only 12 are registered with the Regulator of Social Housing. 4 providers currently have regulatory judgements for breaching governance and viability standards.
Commissioning intentions
What we are doing:
- We work together closely with our health, strategic housing, planning, and housing benefit colleagues to ensure what supported living is delivered in the East Riding offers quality value for money options for our residents.
- We are working on minimum expectations and standards for the supported living accommodation offer we want to see in the East Riding. For example, it is unlikely we will support new “shared” style supported living as we know it is less popular and does not offer people the chance to have their own individual home.
- We are also working on minimum expectations and standards for the supported living care and support offer we want to see in the East Riding.
- We are going to be reviewing all our supported living in the East Riding, both in terms of the care that is delivered and the housing.
- We are following closely the advice from the government and the Regulator of Social Housing on concerns regarding the lease-based model of supported living and sustainability and quality issues.
What we expect providers to do:
- We expect supported living developers, housing providers and care providers to contact us before embarking on any speculative developments so we can work together to deliver the services our residents need and is the right mix to meet local need in a particular area.
- We expect the housing provider to be a registered social landlord that is compliant with the Regulator of Social Housing
- To ensure people’s homes are not tied to the choices they make about their care, we expect housing and care to be provided by separate organisations.
- We know a lot of supported living in recent years has been developed with the lease-based model. If the social landlord leases the property from a superior landlord, we expect to have full transparency on the lease terms and who the superior landlord is. If the superior landlord is tied to the care provider, we may not support the development.
- We expect to see the intensive housing management aspect of supported living delivered by the social landlord and not the care provider.
- We expect care providers to be registered with CQC and rated either ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.
- We expect care providers to be working to the principles of personalisation and person-centred care that is outcome focused. We want to see providers that support people to choose how they want to live and what they want to do with their time. Person centred care should be at the heart of everything you do. Putting individuals and families at the centre of their care and ensuring you support them to be as independent as possible and have full access to the community. We want providers to be able to demonstrate that services and support make a real difference to the lives of the people they support.
- We would particularly be interested in hearing from housing providers that would be interested in working with the council to provide social housing for people with lower-level support needs.
