Extract from 'Inside Housing Today'
by
'Emily Rogers'
A legal challenge
could be on the horizon for organisations planning to
replace replace residential wardens with floating support
support staff in sheltered housing. Alan Hindley, a
resident of Plumpton Lodge, a sheltered housing scheme in
Hackney, has instructed his solicitor to seek a judicial
review to scrutinise the legality of the introduction of
floating support. If his challenge is successful, it could
have implications for schemes across the country. Mr
Hindley argues that replacing residential wardens with
visiting staff removes the security that sheltered housing
tenants seek.
'A lot of
people will die in future if you haven't got sheltered
housing officers on site' , he said. 'There are so many
different isolated incidents when you need help from a
warden onsite'.
Supporting People commissioning bodies are increasingly
moving towards local authority-wide-contracts for floating
support, as an alternative to separate contracts for warden
services with individual housing associations.
Joe Oldman,
housing policy officer at Help the Aged , said 'the charity
was commissioning research to investigate whether the
introduction of floating support was leading to lower
levels of services for sheltered housing tenants. He said
its concerns were also the subject of meetings with
officials from the Communities and Local Government
department. There's an issue around people who have moved
into sheltered schemes but since then have had services
downgraded or removed', Mr Oldman said. 'I think they've
got a case, because they can say we moved into this scheme
because there would be x, y, z services in place'.
He added ' One of the justifications for switching to
floating support is to say that it means that other older
people in other types of have access to similar types of
support'.
Chelmsford sheltered housing tenant
Vernon Yarker , who has set up a website to provide a
campaigning voice for sheltered housing tenants, said the
loss of residential wardens was top of the list of tenants
concerns.
'The ones in
rented accommodation are the ones who are taking it on the
chin at the moment', he said.' People are very concerned,
but they're not putting their heads above the parapet. Once
you've taken away the wardens the wardens, you've done away
with sheltered housing, it will just become OAP flats' .
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