What Is Supported Housing & How Does It Differ To Home Care?
It is sometimes easy to try and reduce social care to a rigid set of categories like residential care, care services in North Hertfordshire and Stevenage and temporary schemes such as respite. Supported housing is about understanding how support is tailored to meet specific needs. It is more accurate and helpful to define care in terms of the support it provides for certain needs.
The ultimate goal of any care and support plan is to balance support and care with independence.
Usually, this means that a person receives the care and support they need for tasks they struggle with, which lets them to do everything they want and gives them control over the other decisions in their life.
Exactly what type of care is appropriate for this will vary significantly. Some people who need round the clock care may benefit from a residential setting. Others may only need a daily or weekly visit by a carer to help them with the tasks they struggle with.
Care is a broad spectrum, and one type of care package that can sometimes be misunderstood is supported housing, as mentioned by the National Housing Federation.
Whilst sometimes characterise it as a middle ground between care in one’s own home and residential care, in reality, it contains aspects of both and neither.
What Is Supported Housing?
Social care often gets reduced to categories like residential care or home care. However, care should focus on the support it provides.
Providers typically offer supported housing to people who cannot safely stay in their own home or need more support and adaptations for this to be feasible. This category of people would not benefit from residential care given their needs.
There are a lot of ways to provide it, but the most common is a set of flats or a small housing estate made up of adapted, tailored housing joined up with other care services.
Most supported housing schemes serve long-term care needs, but others, such as hostels and refuges, deliver crisis care and shelter.
How Does It Differ From Conventional Home Care?
The care itself is often similar in both. Carers deliver packages for supported housing and for home care. People live independently in both models. In supported housing, they also own their accommodation.
Key differences make supported housing more suitable in some cases. The accommodation adapts to specific needs. These changes may be too expensive or impossible in some homes. For example, some people cannot install a stairlift. They also cannot sleep downstairs safely. In such cases, supported housing works better.
Supported housing also helps people with complex care needs. Living near a support centre offers them easier access to help.
About Caremark North Herts and Stevenage
An effective, comprehensive treatment plan with Caremark North Hertfordshire & Stevenage can help with support during the vitally important intermediate period. This is essential to ensure people are confident enough to return home and avoid the risk of future readmissions through effective care planning.