How Britain is Failing Their Older People - Sheltered Housing

Resident Wardens have been removed from rented Sheltered Housing and this has left vulnerable, elderly residents to suffer serious consequences

In reading this please bear in mind that approximately 70% of the residents of rented Sheltered Housing are in receipt of Housing Benefit. The remaining 30% are what is termed “self funding”. Problems are arising in the Housing Benefit group and they have a knock on effect for all residents.

Prior to 2003, for those in receipt of Housing Benefit it also paid for the services of the Warden.

In 2002 the Government took out a Judicial Review to determine if it was legal to pay for the Warden from Housing benefit. The answer was it was not. In response the Government split the housing benefit for residents, one portion still paid in Housing Benefit for what is termed “bricks and mortar” . The other portion was called “support services”. This latter portion was re-located into the Supporting People budgets

There are approximately 149 Supporting People commissioners across the country and they are usually located with local government. Inter alia, their remit includes drug addicts and people with learning difficulties. The services provided by Supporting People are needs based, aimed at a specific problem which, when solved, they moves on. This brings Supporting People Commissioners into conflict with Sheltered Housing which is a tenure based support service and is for the life of the tenant.

Rather than amending the Supporting People needs based remit, to accommodate Sheltered Housing, the alternative solution of attempting to engineer Sheltered Housing resident needs to fall into line with Supporting People has become the only option.

Initially Sheltered Housing was ring fenced within the Supporting People budget, but this ceased in 2010 and Sheltered Housing became a part of the annual bidding wars for funds within specific local authorities.

There is a possibility that Housing Providers can opt out of supplying a Warden a service altogether. In the event Supporting People can provide what is termed 'Floating Support'.

This is not an alternative Warden service but is a community wide service. Many residents do not qualify according to the qualifying criterion set by Supporting People and receive no visits at all. In most cases Floating Support is provided on the basis of , usually, a visit once a week, once every two weeks, or once a month. As mentioned before it is only needs based and it is not envisaged that this type of support would be for a period of more than two years.

The contract to furnish Floating Support does not necessarily belong to the providers of Sheltered Housing, it can now be contracted outside of ownership.

Trickery is being used in asking residents to fill in a Support Plan, without discussing the full implications, and this is later used to reduce Supporting People reimbursements to Housing Providers.

Sheltered Housing UK say that residents made their own Support Plan, which consisted of the service on offer to them when they opted to live in Sheltered Housing, and this support is a part of their contract.

Usually Floating Support is managed on a staff rota system, thus its operatives never get to know the people they are dealing with. In Kent, we have heard of one such operative who had one hundred visits per day. Locally they call it the knock and run service.

People who moved into Sheltered Housing, and, according to our statistics many have sold up or given up their own home because they expected the security of a Warden, have virtually been stabbed in the back and they are not normally of sufficient wealth, or health to reverse their choice now.

The providers of Sheltered Housing who, hitherto, gleaned Housing Benefit for the provision of Wardens from the 70% of their residents who received it, have suffered a loss of income. Their response has been to remove or curtail their Warden service, against the wishes of a majority of their residents.

Section 105 of the Housing Act, 1985 calls upon social landlords to hold consultations with their residents before they make changes to the management of the properties they live in. Many Housing Providers did not consult at all, going ahead and removed, or changed Warden duties to suit their profit expectations.

Consultations, on face value many take to mean that some kind of democratic process has, or is to take place, and they are wrong. Consultations cannot be legally enforced, and there is suspicion that some Housing Providers have held them to satisfy the Housing Act, as above, but have absolutely no intention of acceding to any residents views, unless they coincide exactly with the plan they have in mind.

There have been many Parliamentary Questions put by MPs in the past and; to each the Government field the same answer:- The Government cannot control local government and it is up to Local Government Supporting People, and the complainant must approach them.

This is a slight of hand, a fork of tongue, and buck passing. It was the previous Government, but compounded by the present coalition, which produced this legislation and neither of them carried out any impact assessment when they passed the support element of Sheltered Housing over to local area Supporting People, nor did they exercise a common duty of care.

Moreover, Supporting People is funded from central taxation, so it follows that Central Government, have every right to determine how that money is spent, indeed they have a duty to see how it is spent.

In the past, three of these cases have been taken to a Judicial Review, Eastbourne, Barnet, Portsmouth, and each was found against the Housing Provider. Judicial Reviews per se are investigations into the procedural processes which took place, and where these processes are found to be legally incorrect, the Judge can order that they be put right by going back to the beginning. Which was done, but that does not prevent the adjudged against from getting the procedures right and returning to their previous intention.


How the battle is being waged

The Sheltered Housing UK Association was formed at the end of 2008 when it was realised that individual Sheltered Homes throughout the UK were isolated and were being picked off one by one. The objective was to unite them so that they could be informed and form a counter pressure group to the political events which were affecting them.


At the moment we have 43, cross party, Members of Parliament who support us. Both Geoffrey Cox QC, MP, and Margot James, MP, at different times, have obtained Adjournment Debates in the House of Commons on the subject of Wardens in Sheltered Housing.

Last year we presented a 15,188 signature to No 10 Downing Street, calling upon the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown to save Wardens in Sheltered Housing. The number of signatures we obtained were only limited by the number of people fit enough to undertake the task for collecting them. In some places people actually queued to sign the petition. There have been two other demonstrations outside of Parliament and No 10 Downing Street.

We have had letters in The Times Newspaper and articles in The Observer, Independent, Times On Saturday and The Sunday Express; and we are supported by the, targeted at the elderly, magazines 'Yours', and 'The Mature Times'.

We carried out a national survey of residents needs and requirements in Sheltered Housing.

97% said they only moved into Sheltered Housing because of the anticipated Warden service.

91% said they would never have moved in at all if they had known that they would take the Warden away after they had moved in. Most had given up larger than needs housing, sold or rented, to move into Sheltered Housing.

Our Vice Chairman, as a constituent, of David Cameron, sought a face-to-face meeting with the Prime Minister in October 2010, and the 118 stalled Court cases was discussed, at which the Prime Minister seemed concerned. On other matters he agreed to speak with the Secretary of State for the Department of Communities , Eric Pickles MP and, or, Grant Shapps MP, the Minister for Housing on a possible meeting.

This meeting did not occur, and eventually a letter from Grant Schapps to the Prime Minister was copied to our Vice Chairman saying that Sheltered Housing was traditionally funded through Supporting People.

So apparently the Housing Minister was unaware that Sheltered Housing had been traditionally funded through Housing Benefit but more recently levered into the Supporting People budgets. Thus, demonstrated that not only the Housing Minister short on facts, but the Prime Minister has been misled too ! Since then our Vice Chairman has twiced E-mailed David Cameron in connection with his letter, but has not been dignfied with a response.

Cause and Effect

Many said that, where the Warden had been removed, the activities in their Sheltered Housing complex virtually ceased and the residents had become insular.

Deaths may occur in Sheltered Housing at any time, and in any given circumstances.

But, notably a few have occurred where, had there have been an alert site-specific Warden, who is aware of residents habits and normal demeanour, they could have been prevented.

There is no telling how long some of those people remained alive on the floor of their flat before they died alone. In one of the most recent of cases a trail of maggots led to the body being found.

The longest that we heard of a resident on the floor, yet did survive, was four days. How does the Health and Safety Executive stand on this? Clearly if a service is reduced and death comes as a result, then the Health and Safety Executive should be involved.

Along the way we came across solicitor Yvonne Hossack, whom we invited to take on the cases which were presented to us. It is she who brought and won the first three Judicial Reviews.

From the end of 2008, through 2009, we gathered cases where residents wished to bring their housing provider to Court for removing their Warden against their wishes and passed them on to Hossacks. By early 2010 these numbered c.118 cases and this has since grown to c.150 cases from across the country. The sheer magnitude of dissatisfaction is staggering. The c.118 cases were presented to Legal Aid system in early 2010 and were now for 'breach of contract', rather than Judicial Reviews

The distribution of Legal Aid, Family section, is made geographically and a minor fault had been made in submitting the applications by Hossacks, rsulting in the applications being all made out as if they pertained to the Wiltshire budget.

An easy and correctable mistake. A terse letter from the Legal Services Commission, in about late September, noted this and responded that all the cases had been rejected save the one for Wiltshire. In other words there was just one word wrong in the remaining 117 Applications. Their letter continued 'There is no appeal against this decision'.

We found the assumptive divine right implied in this latter wording is unbelievable.

The Legal Services Commission are a public body and they have no powers whatsoever to state that the public cannot appeal against their decisions. They are paid by the taxpayer, and likewise accountable to the tax payer.

The Sheltered Housing UK consequently embarked on a petition to them noting, within it, that residents were aware that murderers, foreign terrorists, prisoners and villains were all entitled and apparently received Legal Aid, even for the right to be called 'Mr' in prison. Yet, these 2000 residents and 117 cases had been rejected, and for the flimsiest of reasons. We pointed out that they, the LSC, had the telephone, fax and the internet to seek corrections to the Applications, and a bottle of Tippex did not cost a lot. A little applied common sense costs nothing at all !

Under the Freedom of Information Act I asked the LSC how many other solicitors applications had they rejected on the basis of a word wrong in the document and with the added words there is no appeal against this decision. I asked them for their response to the petition as well. Their reply was that the petition letters they had received from residents across the country would make no difference to their decision and they declined to answer the other FOI questions on the basis that they were sub-judice and could harm their commercial operations to reveal them.

Commercial operations ? They are a public body, any operations they indulge in are de facto 'public operations'.

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This briefing is provided by Sheltered Housing UK Association, Registered Charity Number 1137806

In short, we are failing our older people.

More than 500,000 people in the UK reside in Sheltered Housing.

In 2012, there will be more people aged 50 or above than under. These people may need the temporary and reassuring care of a warden, a cost saving measure in comparison to individual care budgets, and shown by studies to reduce the need for and subsequent time spent in a Care Home.

People who move in to Sheltered Housing often come from Council Housing, thereby freeing up two, three and four bedroom houses for the 2 year + waiting lists of families needing somewhere to live.

People who move into Sheltered Housing are less isolated than those who live alone or in changing neighbourhoods. Their mental health, their well being, and their capabilities increase with the reassuring presence of a warden in Shelteres Housing.

But Older People are not demonstrators. They cannot invade Conservative Headquarters and throw fire extinguishers to make their points. They have health problems to worry about.

And yet our country is denying them resident wardens on a technicality.

And as a result, those approaching old age are refusing sheltered housing due to the lack of wardens, which is costing the government more in Supporting People grants, in wasting properties that could house families and in shifting costs to other agencies.

When a fire alarm goes off in a Sheltered Unit now, instead of the Warden recognising it is Mrs Smith burning her toast, the fire engine has to come out.

If Mr Brown takes a fall, he has to call an ambulance. If he can get to the phone of course.

We need more support to help support these people and stop treating our Older People as if they are invisible.

Sheltered Housing UK is seeking donations to help fund cases, seeking people to help collect FOI requests from their local authorities and to help us continue to reach out to people in Sheltered Housing.

Personal Care Accounts (Warning: This Post May Contain Saracasm)

When the BBC Radio 4 proclaimed on the news this morning that people who volunteer could be rewarded with credit to their own care-time accounts, I thought I had woken up in a dystopic nightmare.

I completely advocate volunteering, probably spending more of my freed time doing it than paid work, and I am a trustee for the Volunteering Bureau in my home town. But to capitalise on "rewarding" volunteering is a diabolical proposition.

The very proposal negates the responsibility of family, neighbours and the state to protect older and disabled persons.

We are fast approaching a 50/50 divide of retired and employed persons in the UK, and in spite of this, older people and disabled people are getting less and less funding on a local level.

I have applauded the coalition's approach to raising the pension, maintaining free bus passes and universal winter fuel allowance. But this does not mean they can justify removing care systems that are integral to old age and replace it with volunteers.

Regular readers know that Wardens and their demise are a bugbear of mine. There is evidence to show Councils and Housing Associations are not consulting their tenants properly or legally, and yet Older people are still abused by process.

Now we are supposed to accept volunteers to maintain community care?

"Hureai Kippu", the Japanese scheme to support older people, translates into "Caring Relationship Tickets". Tickets for what exactly?

How exactly do we propose to measure this? I am disabled and my husband technically cares for me*. Does this mean he has an enormous account, or does he have to care for strangers to accrue this valueless reward system?

Firstly, how do we define care? From personal experience, care can range from washing my hair for me through to carrying my shopping. However, I know a great deal of non disabled couples where the husband will carry the shopping. Do they all register as carers?

Alternatively, will they declare on 1st January 2011 that all "carers" accrue credit for the hours they give. They must register these hours how exactly? My husband hoovers as I cannot lift the appliance, why does he not gather a backlog of accrued hours?

Are we not, in fact, discriminating against future generations of Older People by introducing this scheme? By stating that Pensioners and Disabled persons of today are entitled to more support than those in 2020 or 2040? [a digressive post on inchoate discriination is well overdue I feel].

Ultimately Volunteers are no substitute for trained care. They are not accountable to employment regulations, nor are they bound by them. To introduce such regulation would negate the very word "volunteer".

Where would the proposed scheme draw the line between trained staff and volunteers?

I could go on.

Now for the Sarcastic Bit
In my understanding of society we have a system of credit for work done, I believe we call it pound sterling.


* I have arthritis, this means I cannot do some things, like peel vegetables or carry more than 2kg. Sometimes I cannot cut up my own food. However, I still work full time and although I am awarded DLA, I do not claim for my husband as my carer, nor does he claim. We see it as part of our relationship.

Pension Investment and Short-term Returns

With the baby boomers coming to retirement age in 2012 and people aged 50 and over set to increase to roughly 50% of UK population, Pensions are a key issue in politics today.

The National Federation of Pensioners hosted a fringe event at the Liberal Democrat Conference with Stephen Webb MP and Norman Lamb MP which gave me the perfect opportunity to question the Coalition policies.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition proposed radical reforms for the pension systems in the UK. this included restoring earning links with pensions and establishing an independent body to review the system.

In addition to this, the mandatory NEST Pension Scheme is set to be introduced in 2012 over a gradual period for all people to ensure that such a pension deficit does not rise again.

What is not clear, is whether the NEST Pension Scheme will also be run in the same form of "Ponzi" fraud has been seen in the last hundred years in the UK.

This form of investment scheme can only fail, where money is taken from one person to invest in simply given to the next as an alleged payout of that investment. We are currently in a position in the UK where, with such a significant amount of people set to retire, we do not have enough people of working age paying pensions to be able to supply the current pensions.

However, when questioned, Stephen Webb MP asserted that it would not be a Ponzi scheme, instead referring to how the NEST Scheme would prevent the deficit in the future. However, I don't feel that my question on the investment was fully answered.

I would suggest that there are no guarantees and unless I am confident that my own money is going to come directly back to me at the end of my working life, I would be loath to invest in such a scheme.

Short-term returns are not a viable investment, the current financial deficit should identify that if nothing else. I would prefer to see far more sustainable pension policy before I entered into any such NEST-egg.

The Unfathomable Treatment We Subject the Elderly To

Further to my article in Demographic Discursive at the weekend, a fellow campaigner with Sheltered Housing UK forwarded this news report to me.

The article can be found here

"Police were called to a Sheltered Housing unit in the Cecil Road area of Paignton after a 79-year old was found dead by his carer at 9:20AM.

Undertakers could not remove the body, because a disabled buggy was blocking the doorway.

When police officers went to ask the neighbour if he could move the buggy, they found that he was also dead.

It was believed that younger man may have been dead for a couple of days.

The reporter, Paul James, does not mention a word about whether or not the Sheltered Housing scheme had warden coverage, but if this is how often people were checked, it seems safe to assume that it did not. Can you imagine how the other residents of that building must be feeling? THIS is Sheltered Housing?"

I cannot even begin to express my dismay.

I may have only been campaigning for six months with SHUK, but this is why I continue to do so.

In 2012 we will have more people over 50 than under.

One quarter of those people reside in Sheltered Housing.

And our government has allowed wardens to be removed and the unthinkable happen.

Anne (Secretary of SHUK) quoted Bob Dylan:

"How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?"

I will be joining the protest with the UK Pensioners Strategy Group and Sheltered Housing UK on Monday 22nd March to protest and demand the government brings back wardens in Sheltered Housing.

Join me if you can.

Mandatory Retirement Age

My 100th post on this blog and I am referring to one of my first posts last year.

Lynne Featherstone MP announced the Liberal Democrat's support for removing a mandatory retirement age.

The threat of enforced retirement at 65 is totally unacceptable," said the Liberal Democrat Equalities Spokesperson.

This follows on from numerous news stories today on the subject.

However, the ECJ ruled in March 2009 that the UK could not remove a mandatory retirement age.

Back then I commented on the various issues with bored sexagenarians.

However, there is, I am sure, a more cryptic reason for the ECJ's decision. If we have a mandatory retirement age with only a few exceptions, we would need to open our borders to European Migration to ensure we had enough people working in Britain to maintain our exports and imports, to ensure we have services an aging population requires.

As I have debated at length, in 2012 the UK will have more people above the age of retirement than below it. And these people have limited social lives and many skills we do not resource.

Britain secured an "opt out" of the Maastricht Treaty which in turn allowed us to reduce the activity of European migration on our borders. As a result, people who come to work in Britain, legitimately, can go home to their Country of Origin and claim back the taxes they paid here.

As a result, we gain no benefits from having them working here. Were we to open our borders fully, we could tax the employees accordingly and the benefit could be invested in public services.

However, we would have to embrace the Euro. Something I appreciate people are reluctant to do, but I am personally quite in favour of!

Currently we have one third of young people out of work, which severely depletes their chances to sustain work in the long run.

As I said in email correspondence about Lib Dem policy on Older People;

While I appreciate that it appears that the party is focusing on Young People, I would add that this is predominately to ensure we have enough people paying taxes to pay the pensions of those who are retired. Currently there are 25% of people aged 18-24 who are unemployed. Unemployment in youth tends to create people who cannot hold down jobs, which means this could forcast a potential 25% of people out of work and unable to support future generations. This is why investing in the young as well as the old is a priority to any political party. In an ideal world, the pensions contributions paid would support anyone who retires, but with the fluctuations of the economy this is not possible.

This sort of financial forecasting worries governments and we should be investing in Youth employment, but we should not be cutting services or care for the elderly. And if they can and want to work, we should let them.

However, I am unsure of the paths necessary to overrule the ECJ's decison and allow Britain to regain it's economic status by allowing people to chose when they retire, from 60 to 100 if they so chose!

Certainly, my grandmother's retirement do was celebrated with White Water Rafting, and there are many like her who have enthusiasm and energy to provide our country with a variety of skills, expertise, and ultimately, taxes.

The other argument, of course, is that by removing the retirement age, we may subsequently reduce the pensions we are paying out. The average life expectancy in the UK is 77 for men and 81 for women. Rather morbidly, if they retire at 65, the government has to pay a woman state pension for an average of 16 years and a man for 12. If we allow flexibility in working retirement ages, and people start retiring at 70, for example, we will significantly reduce the money the Government has to pay out. Which gives us more money to allocate elsewhere, preferably to caring for those elderly, I would assert.

Therefore, if it is possible, the mandatory retirement age should be removed. Whether it is possible, is another matter.

Tory policy projections are as expected.

So the Tories have finally announced a policy and it is utterly elitist.

Ministers have dismissed the voluntary scheme as "flawed and hasty"

This is quite a good summary in my opinion. Having listened to discussions about on this morning's Radio Four Today Programme, the Tory MP stated that people are needed to go into immediate residential care would not qualify to donate the requisite £8,000, therefore you can only enter the scheme if you were aware you did not at this time need residential care, and if you never needed residential care you'd never be able to get the £8,000 back.

First indicator that having a strong right-centre government will savour only those who have managed to accrue vast amount of savings was their announcement on inheritance tax. Today's announcement does nothing to combat the elitist regime Cameron projects.

Living under a Tory borough council and the Tory county council I can only assume that their intention is to take £8,000 from all of the richest pensioners and then introduce a travelling warden scheme as they have done in our area.

For the 13 sheltered accommodation sites in the Ashford Borough there is only one warden on duty at any one time. Is anticipated that feasibility studies into the effectiveness of the scheme will identify the sheer range of risks this that older people under.

So in essence, the potential Tory government are announcing that they would like to take even more money from old people (considering that one in three pensioners are in poverty anyway) with a view to providing substandard, inadequate care in the event that you don't need is immediately but you potentially may need it the future.

Alternative Transportation

Illogical social policy

Why do we get people over 75 to retake driving tests, and if they fail give them motor scooters with out tests?

These "trundle buggies" are lethal and un-mot'd, replaced with new models by the government regularly and then people are surprised when this, this, and this.

There is some initiative to instill basic road guidance but like all policy for elderly and people with impairments it is not exactly high on the concern pile.