Winter is coming...

Jon Snow knew much of the perils that lurked in the coming winter. With his battle-hardened peers in the Night’s Watch, he could see from the wall, and through forays beyond, the danger that made its home in the cold and ice. But, apart from a bad case of frostbite, what did Jon Snow and those around him suffer as a result of? Well, a lack of shared ownership of the problem, poor collaboration and, as the issues intensified, a failure to use dwindling resources in a different, more efficient way.

You wouldn’t find many of us looking pensively into the distance, muttering 'winter is coming' during August. But, let’s face it, he had the right idea. We should have a joint sense of urgency, readiness and understanding of the challenges unique to this time of year.

Outside the world of  'Game of Thrones', the statistics around fuel poverty and winter deaths are sobering. In 2012, 30% of households in Wales (386,000 households) were estimated to be in fuel poverty. This is the equivalent to 54,000 more households than in 2008. Rising fuel prices have largely been counteracted by the increases in income and energy efficiency savings in the housing stock, and this has led to the increase in the number of fuel poor households.

Fuel poverty is a significant cause of excess winter deaths and, in 2012/13, there were 1,900 excess winter deaths in Wales. This was a 32% fall from the previous winter, which had seen the highest number since 1999/2000, but still above the 10 year average. 89% of these deaths involved people aged 65 or over, with the highest rate amongst those over 85 who constituted nearly 60% of the total.

There is much being done in an attempt to reduce these figures. For example, Care & Repair Cymru works with older people across Wales to support them to live in warm, safe and secure homes. This work is continued throughout the year; however, it is particularly pertinent heading toward the winter months. This year, Care & Repair agencies are offering free winter warm packs, containing a blanket and hot water bottle. These packs help to promote Care & Repair agencies as a service to help older people prepare for and manage safely through the winter.

Housing associations are doing much to offset the impact of fuel poverty, including:

• Improving the energy efficiency of homes through the Welsh Housing Quality Standard and energy programmes such as Arbed
• Helping tenants maximise their income through projects such as the Your Benefits are Changing (YBAC) campaign. YBAC helps tenants to claim benefits they are entitled to. One area of success has been the identification of the Warm Home Discount - YBAC last year successfully assisted over 914 people to claim a rebate which equates to an annual sum of £127,960. 
• Helping to try to negate energy price increases through such actions as behavioural change for energy use. 

Across public services, the impacts of winter are likely to be felt more profoundly in the Welsh NHS. Winter preparedness is a key task for Health Boards, and a hot topic within the media and public sphere. But it’s important, particularly now in the context of prudent healthcare, that we all take responsibility as individuals and organisations to meeting the winter challenge.

In terms of working with housing associations:

• Creating capacity for step down accommodation in Extra Care and Sheltered Housing
• Placing housing professionals within hospital discharge teams to decrease delayed transfer of care
• Working with housing associations to facilitate and coordinate community activity during the winter months
• Partnering to ensure that advice and information is accessible in a range of community settings and media formats. 

Of course, this should all rightly go beyond what we plan as organisations and a mix of services. Last year, Public Health England called for 100,000 people to check on neighbours over the winter months.

We should be using this time to reignite our sense of community, decrease loneliness and isolation during months when these may be felt more profoundly and together contribute to managing the demand on GP or A&E service during these months. Everyone can help, from championing local services, clearing roads, communal snowman building, committing your long term future to the Night’s Watch – it’s the small gestures that will truly make a difference this Christmas. It could put a smile on someone’s face, it could save a life.

Matthew Kennedy
Policy Officer: Care, Support and Health

#HousingDay - Tanya's story

In 2001, Tanya MacGregor was a domestic abuse victim and homeless mother-of three. However, today, she is living proof of how the social housing sector can transform lives for the better.

Tanya has gone full circle from being homeless and in the depths of domestic abuse despair to gaining a degree and winning numerous awards. She is now giving back and providing life-changing help to others via the Your Benefits Are Changing (YBAC) campaign run by Community Housing Cymru (CHC).

She said: “It’s amazing the opportunities that social housing has provided for me and my family. I went from being homeless with a young family to finding my way to getting a home, which in turn allowed me to access services, health, a degree, a job. None of this would have been possible without social housing.

“The effect on my family has been transformational. I now work full time helping others to get their houses in order as a money adviser with YBAC. My eldest son completed a degree, my daughter went to college and now works full time, and my youngest is now doing his GCSEs. I couldn’t have even imagined all this a decade ago.

“Without a home, you can’t get access to anything - you don’t exist. Social housing has given me and my family the chance to lay down roots and better ourselves.

“Social housing is a comfort blanket – it allows people access to affordable rents and the chance to re-train and go out to work. We would not have achieved what we have as a family without social housing; we would have been pushed from pillar to post. Social housing has been our safety net and I hope as many people can benefit from it in the same ways that my family and I have.”

More than a decade ago, the married mother became homeless after deciding she could no longer put up with the beatings she was enduring from her then husband.

Overnight, she went from being a homeowner to homeless, with nothing more than a full carrier bag to her name. With her three young children - aged nine, six and five-months old - she took refuge in a women’s hostel.

Tanya spent a year classed as homeless in the hostel run by Cardiff Women’s Aid and owned by United Welsh. During this time she was able to re-build her confidence and take stock of her situation, all the while making friends with fellow victims of domestic abuse staying at the hostel.

Tanya's time in the hostel also started her journey into adult learning with her undertaking a basic skills and IT course along with a Maths course, initially so that she ‘could help her young son with his homework’.

Shortly afterwards, she joined the Board of Management as a committee member/service user and got involved in a Tenant Empowerment Grant scheme. In doing this, Tanya began her ‘giving back’ - using her own experiences to help others suffering as a result of pre or post domestic abuse issues. The tenant service user group offered friendship, craft and DIY classes. It also gave women mental support and well as technical and practical skills, advice, help and, just like Tanya - hope for the future.

Tanya remained a board member for four years, her own experience being a remedy to help others and herself on the road to recovery.

Tanya and the group’s efforts were praised and the model won an award for Good Practice by the Welsh Assembly.

Around this time, Tanya’s confidence and circumstances had improved greatly. She and her young family were rehoused by Cardiff Council and she enrolled on a Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) and Policy Degree at UWIC. During her first day she spotted two other familiar faces in the class. Recalling that time, she said: “Two of my classmates were ladies from the refuge and now they both work in the housing sector, like me.”

On the back of her adult learning success, Tanya won the All Wales Housing Manager Local Council Academic Achievement Award, the 2008 CIH Welsh Student of the Year and the 2008 CIH National Student of the Year Award, which lead to her taking part in the prestigious Tri-Countries Conference in Canada.

In 2008-2009, Tanya worked at Rhondda Housing Association as Tenancy Support Officer. Her housing degree dissertation was about Older People in Extra Care which she did for another housing association - Linc Cymru. The subject theme became particularly poignant in 2009 when Tanya decided to take a break from work to care for her parents who were both suffering with Alzheimer’s disease.

Tanya aged 48, said: “It was a difficult time, but as my dissertation was about the same issues I felt I was equipped to fight for the rights of my parents and sort everything out. I was juggling the care of my parents and the care of my young family.”

In 2010 Tanya decided she wanted to get back into work on a part time basis and gained a six month position with Cadwyn Housing through the job centre scheme, Go Wales, doing admin for the HA Tenant Participation and Financial Inclusion arm.

Tanya said: “I was feeling down about my circumstances with my parents’ illness and going back to work gave me renewed confidence. This was down to the organisation's managers and staff and support for my situation. They had fundraising events for Alzheimer’s society.”

From 2011 until today, Tanya has been employed as one of the YBAC Money Advisors at CHC, set up to help distribute information about Welfare Reform.

Courtesy of CHC, she gained a MA qualification from Staffordshire University.

Tanya completed an evaluation for Rhondda Housing Association on the Financial Inclusion project. Also, as part of YBAC, Tanya has provided advice sessions for a number of housing associations and attended CHC’s YBAC campaigning events on behalf of tenants.

Tanya said: “Housing Associations are not in the business of evicting people so the work I do is helping people to get their house/home finances in order. I know only too well how hard it can be. I’ve been there and the advice I was given was invaluable, so I hope I can repay the favour by helping others.”


Tanya MacGregor
Money Adviser, CHC

#HousingDay - Jemma's story

My name is Jemma Bere and I am a tenant and tenant board member of Wales & West Housing. I work for CREW Regeneration Wales, part of the CHC Group.

In 2001, my mother died in a car accident whilst in Andalucia, Spain. After the funeral in the UK, my brother and sister returned to Spain with their father where they began school. However, their father turned to drink and eventually became unable to care for them and in 2005, I was told that the children had been taken into the care of social services in Almeria. I went to Spain immediately to see them but there was very little I could do. After a couple of months, I received a phone call from the Spanish authorities who told me that unless someone in the family could take on the children, they would have to be put into foster care. They could give me no guarantees that they would be kept together or that I could visit them so I made the decision right there that I would look after them. I was 24 and had just graduated from university.

It took me two years to navigate the bureaucracy and go through the adoption process to get the children to the UK but I was determined and a few key friends and organisations took sympathy to my cause. On the 15th July 2008, I brought the children back to the UK and they were reunited with their nan and brother who they hadn't seen in 7 years. I had no house and no capital, just the conviction that it was the best decision I had ever made. We were given emergency housing at first but were offered a permanent house by Wales & West after a couple of months. I can't describe the feeling of security that that brought to us. Used to being shuffled around, the children only believed that they were here to stay when we got the house and the change in them from that point was amazing to see.

The children spoke little English at first and we lived on benefits whilst we were finding our feet. The rarity of the situation made the application process difficult and we lived on £90 a week child tax credit for the initial 6 months. I learnt to make everything from scratch, even shampoo! It was a hard time but the safety nets afforded to us through social housing and welfare gave us enough security to start to build a life together.

I'm very proud to be living in social housing and a tenant board member of my housing association. I am delighted at the opportunity to give back and help to make a difference in the sector.

I'm supporting Housing Day because it offered me a lifeline when I thought I had none. I don't want to think about where the children and I would have been without the opportunity for a affordable home. As a social housing tenant, I know my rent money goes toward others in need and providing them with the opportunity to build their lives just like it did with me. 

Jemma Bere
Regeneration Officer (CREW Regeneration Wales) and Wales & West Housing tenant

Read more about Jemma's story here.

The scandal of pensioner winter deaths

Why is society in Wales so prepared to put up with more older people dying in the winter compared to other months of the year?

In 2012/13, the Chief Medical Officer for Wales confirmed that this is the case with 1,900 more deaths in the winter months, with 70% of these attributed to our over 75 year olds. This pattern is repeated year on year.

Why? Because as we age, we become frailer, our bodies are less able to cope with low temperatures and we become more susceptible to respiratory and circulatory illness.

This is backed up by accepted figures in Wales that 140,000 pensioners are in fuel poverty, meaning they need to spend more than 10% of their income on fuel costs.

“Just turn the heating on”, I hear you say. It’s not as simple as that. With rising energy costs and many older people on a fixed income, many cannot afford to pay their fuel bills... so they don’t turn on the heating. Many older people face many difficult decisions, like choosing between eating or heating their home.

Many thousands of older people can’t survive on their state pension or are not claiming the benefits they are entitled to. They have boilers which are old, inefficient and use more fuel. They live in properties which aren’t insulated. They are on an expensive fuel tariff and don’t know how to change provider. They don’t know about the latest government grant scheme that just might be able to help them.

This isn’t good enough. It is clear that the system isn’t working because we still have older people dying in the winter who wouldn’t be dying in other months of the year.

While there are undoubtedly plenty of schemes that could help, there is confusion for older people about where to go and what help they can get, and we are not doing enough to find and help the people who need that help the most.

There have been numerous grant schemes, over many years, such as Home Energy Efficiency Scheme (HEES), Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT), Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP), and now, the NEST and Energy Company Obligation (ECO). There is lots of evidence to suggest that these schemes have helped improve many properties, helped many people on low incomes and reduced carbon emissions, particularly in the social housing sector. Housing associations and local authorities have undoubtedly carried out some great work with energy companies for the benefit of their properties and their tenants.

We now need to focus on the people we haven’t reached. One particularly affected group is low income, older owner occupiers dispersed in urban, suburban and rural areas across all of Wales. Finding these people requires more up front effort and is not as attractive to energy companies who have legal targets on the quantity of carbon emissions they need to reduce, so instead have targeted geographic energy efficiency schemes at scale.

So, to combat older people dying of cold this winter, Care & Repair Cymru is running their Fighting Fuel Poverty campaign this week (October 20-24) to find older people who are most at risk and to provide them with practical advice.

We aim to help them access benefits and available grants to keep them warm, as well as assisting them directly with our “Health through Warmth” grants, delivered in partnership with Npower.

We’re also asking people who receive the winter fuel payment, but don’t need it, to donate it to a hardship fund at Care & Repair by calling 0300 111 3333 so that we can redirect this to older people in fuel poverty who need more help.

As we head into the winter months and look ahead to the UK elections next year, we believe that the UK and Welsh Governments need a rebalancing of policy focus so that tackling fuel poverty and stopping winter deaths amongst our older people receives as much attention as reducing CO2 emissions.

We need co-ordinated action by government and energy companies to target advice and energy efficiency grants based on specific need of individuals as well as wider need to reduce the carbon footprint.

As the Older People’s Housing Champion for Wales, our “Fighting Fuel Poverty” campaign aims to highlight the scandal of pensioner winter deaths and find solutions to help those in need. We’re only a phone call away, so if you’re an older person or have a relative, neighbour or friend in need of help, please call one of our local agencies on 0300 111 3333. Care & Repair can reach out and spread a bit of human kindness and warmth this winter to those feeling left out in the cold.


Chris Jones
Chief Executive
Care & Repair Cymru

Working in partnership for warmer homes

With Autumn now firmly taking hold, people across the country are starting to turn the heating on. However, it’s easy to forget that not everyone has the luxury of keeping their home warm.

A warm home has a significant impact on our health and wellbeing. As research has shown, cold temperatures can have a detrimental effect on people with long-term health conditions such as heart, circulatory and respiratory disorders, as well as the elderly community.

Indeed, this subject has become a real focus for the Government in recent months, with calls for a collaborative approach across the health sector to ensure that those who need it most are able to heat their homes. Recent guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has also added to the debate, calling for the wider community, from gas engineers to health workers, to work together to identify vulnerable people who are at risk.

This partnership approach is one that npower Health Through Warmth has championed since the scheme began in 2000, by working with organisations such as Care & Repair Cymru. Together, we help vulnerable people to stay warm at home, whether it’s by replacing broken boilers or installing heating systems or loft and cavity wall insulation.

That’s why npower Health Through Warmth is supporting Care & Repair Cymru's Fighting Fuel Poverty campaign, to remind people that help may be available for vulnerable home owners who have a long term illness, a low income with little or no savings and who are unable to fully fund the work required.

For more information, or to find out if you or someone you know could be eligible for help, visit www.healththroughwarmth.com or contact your local Care & Repair Agency on 0300 111 3333.


Elaine Midwinter
Scheme Manager
npower Health Through Warmth

Fighting fuel poverty - let Care & Repair help you

According to latest figures, there are almost 2,000 excess winter deaths a year in Wales. We hear the term ‘excess winter deaths’ quite frequently, but it’s hard to imagine how and why this can happen.

As an Affordable Warmth Caseworker for Care & Repair Cardiff, visiting older people on a daily basis in their homes, unfortunately I can see how this happens. When reporting on this issue, the press might conjure up images of older people with blankets around their knees, shivering in front of a gas fire. This is not the case for the majority of older people, but for some this is actually their reality.

I saw a lady recently in Riverside who was wearing a dressing gown over her clothes to keep warm every time I visited her. I saw a gentleman in Canton who wore a woolly hat and refused to put the heating on unless it snowed because he was scared of high gas bills. I saw a lady in Grangetown who had no form of heating whatsoever in the house, had never had any, and cried every time I visited as she couldn’t face another winter living that way. Unfortunately, this is how some older people live, and it is easy to see how their health and wellbeing can be affected.

Many older people live on low incomes, have little or no savings and live in homes that don’t suit their needs. Quite often, they live in the family home that they have lived in for decades which they now find that they can’t afford to maintain or heat adequately. There are often problems with the heating system, windows and damp, along with stairs and bathrooms that can’t be managed. Many people are just used to managing and used to be being cold; they’re not aware of the damage it could be doing to their health or where to go for help. Poor physical health and mental health problems can also complicate the issue and make it difficult for people to find and access help, or even to face having anything done to their home.

There is help out there. We can help people to find grants to improve their home and heating and support them through the process of having any work done. We can help people to take control of their bills by looking at changing supplier or making sure they are on the best tariff. We also make sure that people are claiming all the benefits they are entitled to which can vastly increase their income and make life a little easier. We’ve also helped people to clear gas and electricity debts.

I think it will be difficult to find a long term solution to fuel poverty. Grants for new boilers are excellent in the short term, but what happens in 10 years time when that boiler is inefficient again? It’s not a long term solution to the problem. We hear that insulating our homes is the best solution, but most people have had cavity wall and loft insulation fitted and accessing more complicated specialist measures is difficult and very expensive.

One thing I have come to learn in this job is the importance of planning for your old age. Older people should be able to live out their later years in comfort without worrying about living in cold homes which don’t suit their needs. It’s of benefit to everyone of any age to think about maintaining their homes, having appliances regularly serviced and using energy as efficiently as possible. These are all things that Care & Repair can assist with, so I would advise anyone who needs advice to contact us on 0300 111 3333.


Beatrice Roberts
Caseworker, Care & Repair in Cardiff

Fighting Fuel Poverty

The impact of fuel poverty goes beyond financial consequences. Living in fuel poverty can affect people’s health, increasing the risk of common ailments such as colds, flu and respiratory infections including bronchitis. This has resulted in worryingly high excess winter death levels in Wales, with older people particularly susceptible.

There are indirect effects: stress in children and adults, long-term depression and anxiety, social exclusion, damaged health and life chances for families and individuals and reduced educational attainment.

Moreover, there are broader budget implications for education, employment and health services in Wales.

You are in fuel poverty if 10% or more of your household income is spent on energy.

The causes of fuel poverty are equally complex, requiring a person centred approach alongside energy efficiency measures.

In 2012, 30% of households in Wales were living in fuel poverty, equating to 386,000 homes. Nearly 85% of these are vulnerable households, containing a child, older person or someone with a disability or chronic illness.

Energy efficiency is not the only way of helping fuel poor households and further opportunities exist, including helping people to find the best energy deal and to maximise their income.

True partnership working is key to finding those who are hardest to reach, ensuring that they receive all the help they are entitled to and developing solutions to meet their needs and situation.

No one agency can provide all the solutions to a complex problem affecting people with diverse circumstances. However, a central movement such as Care & Repair Cymru can guide people in the right direction to obtain the help they need.

Last year, Care & Repair agencies gave energy advice to 1,800 older people and 1,000 older people who had damp in their home. Amongst other things, they can advise on whether you are eligible for a £140 Warm Home Discount on your electricity bill and how, as a pensioner, you can join your energy supplier’s Priority Services Register.

If you require help or are unsure about the help you can receive, then contact Care & Repair for free advice on 0300 111 3333.

Mark Isherwood AM 

Chair of the Cross Party Group on Fuel Poverty sponsored by NEA Cymru and Citizens Advice Cymru