Wales Co-op gets involved with CHC's fesTYval...

During the school holidays, we have time to consider where CHC’s recent FesTYval fitted into the summer programme of events. It began by cleaning up the unused Cyfartha School in Merthyr...

Yes, actually cleaning the school!

Delegates were welcomed by singing in the first morning session, plants could be bought all day, and popsicles were sold in the afternoon as the sun shone. The Wales Co-op shared a stand with Cadwyn Housing Association and all the visitors mingled.

Home Farm Housing Co-op featured in our exhibition as a pioneer pilot co-operative housing scheme in our support project. This support project is funded by Welsh Government and The Nationwide Foundation – the latter from their alternative housing funding programme. They are working with the international Building and Social Housing Federation as part of ‘Scaling up Community-led Housing’ which they describe here.

We are part of the Alliance across the UK, so the FesTYval in Merthyr was part of this regeneration. Ideas and messages from what used to be Wales' largest town, when coal and iron were exported all over the world, are again being used to promote Co-operative Housing across Wales and beyond.

I can’t wait for other CHC events in the Autumn, and trying to guess what and where FesTYval will be next year!


David Palmer
Wales Co-Operative Centre 

Local energy production and local energy supply

According to the Wales Fuel Poverty Projection Tool released in 2013, 31% of social housing tenants in Wales still lived in fuel poverty in 2012. This equates to 70,000 households, which is a rise of 6% from 2008 indicators. Tenants living in housing association properties have been affected significantly by rising fuel bills, benefit changes and the ‘bedroom tax’. High energy prices in Wales are compounded by the energy inefficiency of Welsh housing and lack of access to mains gas in rural areas. Furthermore, many social housing tenants in Wales are using prepayment meters to pay for their gas and electricity bills, which can mean that they end up paying more for their energy needs.

Taking these factors into account, along with the recent changes outlined in the UK Government’s summer budget, any opportunity which offers the potential of increasing household budgets as well as raising income for HAs, needs to be explored. Exploring the potential for local energy production and local energy supply is one of those opportunities.

CHC is holding a ‘Local energy production and local energy supply’ event in Cardiff on September 30th to explore these opportunities. Many organisations feel that we need to address the market failure impacting on low income households and we need to impact fuel poverty directly through price. There is a significant and growing appetite to intervene directly in the energy market, as outlined in a “Non-traditional business models: Supporting transformative change in the energy market” event recently run by Ofgem and Welsh Government. Feedback from this event will be provided at CHC’s event.

Examples of non-traditional business models include community energy projects which share an emphasis on community ownership, leadership or control where the community benefits, as well as ‘Energy Service Companies business models’, which include financing, designing, building, operating and maintaining small-to-medium scale demand management and/or low carbon energy projects, as part of either energy service contracts or energy performance contracts.

Following updates from Ofgem and Welsh Government, ‘Our Power’ will provide an update on their activity at the event. ‘Our Power’ is a new independent energy supply company and the first in the UK to operate on a non-profit distributing basis. It plans to sell heat and power to tenants in 200,000 homes across Scotland by 2020. This agenda item will be the longest session on the day, providing an opportunity to hear about Our Power’s journey so far and any potential for collaboration with the sector in Wales.

Before concluding the event with a ‘next steps’ discussion, a range of organisations will get an opportunity to outline their services and project work in relation to local energy production. Part of this includes local energy production through renewable energy systems. People in Wales have amongst the second highest electricity bills in Great Britain, which is largely due to Wales’ energy infrastructure and higher distribution costs faced by consumers in Wales.

A fair deal on distribution costs is needed for Welsh consumers. Part of this deal is the need to improve the capacity and infrastructure of the national grid with regards to installing renewable energy systems amongst other benefits. There is great potential for renewable energy in Wales and, alongside this, we need to consider the potential for energy storage, smart grids and other technological advances. Such projects can have significant social, environmental and economic benefits for housing associations, tenants and communities.

To book your place on CHC’s event on 30th September, please click here.


Shea Jones
Energy and Sustainability Officer

Stronger Together – can cross-sector organisations work together to deliver successful solutions?

There are many stereotypes about the voluntary sector and also the commercial sector. The voluntary sector can be perceived to be a bit ‘hippy dippy’, extremely caring, but maybe not overly business-like, driven or innovative in approach; whereas the commercial sector are all pin-striped suit wearing salesmen who are all in it for the money. Obviously, these are extreme viewpoints for the purpose of this article and very few will believe that these are truly reflective, if at all. However, it can still be unusual for the two to work together, let alone work together to develop innovative and workable partnerships that deliver fantastic outcomes for all of those involved. The great news is that these partnerships are happening and are beginning to deliver real solutions to the challenges being faced in this new climate.

The history of Care & Repair in Wales began in the late 1970s. Concern about the circumstances of older people led to the early research about housing for older people. Successive studies and house conditions across the UK pointed to older people occupying disproportionately poor housing. Home Improvement Agencies (Care & Repair) developed in the UK in response to the growing awareness of problems faced by older homeowners living in housing that was statutorily unfit for habitation, lacking basic bathroom and kitchen amenities, damp, in serious disrepair, unhealthy and sometimes dangerous.

Fast forward to today and Care & Repair Cymru is now the ‘Older People’s Housing Champion’, supporting older people through not only housing repairs, but also many other valuable services such as benefits advice, housing adaptations, falls prevention, energy efficiency and affordable warmth. In 2013-14 alone the Care & Repair movement in Wales helped over 40,000 people through various interventions, helping older people to live in homes that enhance their quality of life.

In addition to on-the-ground support and individual help, Care & Repair Cymru also works to influence national policy and thinking; for example, appearing before Welsh Government Committees and UK Government Inquiries and advising on housing’s contribution to social care challenges, championing older people from grass roots to the very highest level.

Care & Repair Cymru has long recognised that to truly meet the needs of the older people they support, they need to look outside of traditional funding solutions and cannot rely on public sector funding alone. As with many third sector organisations, this has become particularly relevant in recent years following the credit crunch as budgets have been contracted with numbers of individuals needing vital services ever growing.

What has been particularly important to Care & Repair Cymru is that their Caseworkers are empowered to be able to help those that they look after in as many ways as possible. The last thing that a Caseworker or Care & Repair Cymru would ever want would be to be approached by an older person in need and not be able to help in any way. As part of increasing the number of options that Caseworkers have available to them, Care & Repair Cymru has made innovative partnerships with a number of organisations that can help them offer more options to those that they look after. One of these partnerships has been with social enterprise advant~age.

advant~age is a national organisation that enables charities to help vulnerable people, their families and carers, and supporters obtain access to safe and reputable products and services, whilst at the same time generating valuable unrestricted income for the charity and minimising reputational risk. One of the services that advant~age offers through its partner Bower Retirement Services is equity release advice. The role of advant~age includes performing rigorous due diligence and quality control on the providers of the services that it offers. This then ensures that customers can then be confident they will receive a high quality service at a fair price and charities can feel confident in signposting to providers, knowing that their reputations are protected. This was of particular importance to Care & Repair Cymru. With grants for repairs and adaptations shrinking, equity release advice can be an option that older people may want to consider as a way of funding works on their homes. As a member of the Equity Release Council and registered with the Financial Conduct Authority, Bower Retirement Services can offer safe and reputable, independent whole of market advice to individuals that may want to find out more about the options that are available to them.

Equity release isn’t the answer to everything, but by being able to signpost to reputable advice Care & Repair Cymru can increase the number of options that are available to those that they look after. For individuals that can mean access to funding to repair their homes and enable them to live more independently for longer, for Caseworkers it means that they can offer more solutions to more people more of the time. In addition to increasing the services available for any equity release services that are completed, a donation is made to the Care & Repair Cymru hardship fund, at no extra cost to the individual, enabling Care & Repair Cymru to deliver even more vital services in the communities it supports.

Care & Repair Cymru, advant~age and Bower Retirement Services believe that this type of cross-sector partnership will have a key role in the future provision of services to older people where traditional options are reducing or even disappearing. It is fantastic to see such a variety of organisations working together to develop and build services in partnership to provide solutions to the challenges that are being faced by individuals, third and public sectors alike.

For further information, please click here. 

Heather Dungey, Care & Repair Cymru
Jenni Buckland, advant-age
Ian Howarth, Bower

Creating Pro-Social Places – The Importance of Urban Design

To support the collective social wellbeing set out in the Marmot Review, Fair Society Healthy Lives (2010), we need to foster a culture that regards and manages places as essential infrastructure. We have entered a critical era where greater thought leadership in our place-making culture is essential.

Dubbed “Toxic Assets” by CABE, Britain’s poorly performing urban places and communities continue to absorb much of our GDP, where land, places and people are exploited and treated like commodities. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Jarred Diamond discusses the dangers of continued exploitation and the outcomes for societies that could not change their behaviour patterns: certain extinction.

With expenditure outstripping income, we have entered a long period of economic depression with high levels of ‘welfare’ costs signifying a nation under stress. Whilst the government’s economic austerity measures may rebalance the budget on paper, their short-term nature does not address the fundamental health and wellbeing issues that impact individuals, communities and the wider stability of the nation.

The Marmot Review emphasises the impact of urban quality on matters of equity, health and wellbeing giving urban designers an important role to play, but not through the technocratic fixes that they are typically trained to deliver. So, where do we start when thinking about the relationship between place-making, health and wellbeing?

Please visit CREW Regeneration Wales' website to read the post in its entirety.

Graham Marshall BA(Hons) PGDipLA MAUD CMLI
Professor Rhiannon Corcoran

Who takes care of the carer?

A few years ago, my Dad was suffering with heartburn and was having difficulties with swallowing. He was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. Due to his age (69) he was not able to have an operation to remove the tumour and therefore started aggressive chemotherapy.

My mum, already retired, became a full-time carer. Both of their worlds completely changed. Mum was fit and healthy and very independent, attending her gym and tai chi and visiting me and my brother who now live far away. As time went on, she lost everything due to Dad’s illness.

After a few months, Dad stopped being able to eat entirely and was fed through a tube. He suffered terribly with the chemotherapy and, despite three rounds, it did not shrink the tumour. Dad lived another 18 months, deteriorating during this time.

My Mum received excellent support from local health services and Dad’s Macmillan nurse. Dad tried attending the local hospice for a few afternoons but didn’t like it so Mum had no respite from him. He was both physically and psychologically demanding, as you can imagine. Marie Curie nurses were also an outstanding support to us in his last few weeks, as they took over the night shift. Because of their support, Dad was able to die at home.

Mum and Dad were typical Care & Repair clients. They had both worked all their lives and owned their own home. Dad was a mechanic and was able to maintain their large three bedroomed house until their crisis occurred. They had never received any statutory services or benefits and were therefore unaware of how to access support.

Due to where they lived in England, they did not have access to Care & Repair services like the Care & Repair services we manage here in Wales. Upon leaving hospital after falling and breaking his leg, Dad would have been eligible for our Rapid Response Adaptations Programme for adaptations to help him and Mum move him safely around the home. Care & Repair would have helped to move the bed downstairs when necessary and would have supported Mum to access Attendance Allowance to fund the extra costs of caring for Dad. They could also have provided advice about the other services which Mum could access to support her needs as a carer. All of these things, of course, were implemented for Mum and Dad, but nowhere near as quickly and as smoothly as they would have been if they had one Agency like Care & Repair to manage this practical support.

Three years on; Mum lives alone. Her health suffered during the first few years but now she is back to her independent self. She not only lost Dad but lost all of her networks due to caring for Dad, so she has had to work hard at developing her own life again. What does she find most difficult? The answer is managing a three bedroom house and a garden, alone, without a Care & Repair handyperson to trust to do small jobs around the house and without a Care & Repair service to support her through larger works.

I wrote this blog to highlight the amazing work of carers and the agencies which supported Mum to care for Dad and allow him to die at home. I also wrote it to highlight the work of Care & Repair in Wales and why it is imperative that our services are protected in order to support the ever increasing numbers of older people in Wales to live their independent lives.

Rachel Gingell
Policy Officer, Care & Repair Cymru 

Care & Repair doctoral research project

The Care & Repair Swansea University Doctoral Research project is now live! Given many of the headline messages from social policy and Welsh Government strategy relating to housing, health, social services and primary care, around a community-based social model of healthcare and public service integration, this is an exciting opportunity. Detailed work around our main activity as a frontline, home-visiting casework service will undoubtedly trace a bigger community footprint, which should be useful for policy development at a crucial stage in the debate around future-proofing public services.

Care & Repair agencies provide a unique and standard approach to the housing, environmental and living circumstances of older people. It is a blended approach, combining social care and technical housing fabric to provide a person-centred and problem-led approach. The older person receives an individually tailored, bespoke service. This has always appeared to work well. However, in a world of integrated approaches, shrinking public investment and competitive approaches, does it still work? ‘Bespoke’ is an old-fashioned and possibly hackneyed term, so are we becoming an old-fashioned service? In a fast-moving world, where the old artisan and craft skills are disappearing, will our approach end up as ‘time consuming’ and ‘over promising and under delivering’? Living under the big community tent and marshalled by statutory partners, are we a pivotal hub and close to the tent pole, or are we a cheap resource, disappearing at the edge of the camp like a flapping guy-rope?

My take on our ‘big offer’ is that we are the most modern of public sector organisations, anticipating important strategic trends and in the vanguard of change. We are defined by our partnerships and our collaborative efforts - in the best sense, ‘co-production’ in action. Seeking to build service capacity, we were a ‘social enterprise’ brand before the social entrepreneurs moved in. If you are looking to define prevention, we are responding to the real challenges older people face before they escalate into crises. If we deconstruct the pseudo-sociological concepts of ‘social model’-speak, we are a plain-talking, honest and accessible community delivery model. For the 12,000 older people we visit in their homes each year, we are a future-proofing service, keeping them ‘ahead of the curve’ rather than ‘stuck in the past’. I would say that, wouldn’t I? What do you think? This is an opportunity to say what you want as research student Joanna Wolton begins her investigations.

Neil Williams
Head of Agency Performance and Funding, Care & Repair Cymru

At this early stage, please leave a comment on the blog if you'd like any further information. 

Reimagining regeneration in Wales

Housing-led regeneration has never been more active than it currently is in Wales.

Many thought that welfare reform would reduce the amount of regeneration activity that housing associations are involved with. This has not been the case. Regeneration activity has become more focused on tackling poverty and improving the lives of tenants due to welfare reform measures.

Figures from our annual WERU report indicate that during 2013/14, housing associations spent £514m on regeneration across Wales. This is broken down into a £185m spend on new build housing development, £292m on repairs and maintenance and just over £36m spend on community regeneration. Community regeneration projects include, for example, financial inclusion, energy efficiency retrofit and advice, employment and training, digital inclusion, social enterprise creation and collaboration (with support from our Building Enterprise project), and community development.

It is an overused saying, but social housing really is much more than bricks and mortar!

Housing associations are increasingly recognised as regeneration delivery agents and many are involved in partnerships to deliver the Welsh Government's ‘Vibrant and Viable Places’ programme which has provided over £100m to regenerate communities across Wales. We welcome the recognition of the sector and believe that housing associations can play a key role in local service delivery and community regeneration as the cuts to public services continue to hit.

On 18th June, we will celebrate the sector’s role in regenerating communities at our annual fesTYval at Cyfarthfa Castle, Merthyr. The event is an an informal and interactive day suitable for all those involved in community regeneration including housing associations, local authorities, social enterprises and third sector organisations. This year has a "school theme" and we have a variety of sessions planned around the themes of wellbeing, health, social enterprise and engagement. We are expecting another sell out event with over 200 attendees!

To find out more and to book your place for only £30 per head, visit CHC's website.

You can also take a look at last year’s event on YouTube.

#fesTYval

Hayley MacNamara

Regeneration Officer