Annual Review 2008

Housing

Many people with a spinal cord injury find that, when it comes time to leave hospital, they don’t have a suitable home to go back to. Instead, they are given little option but to move to a care home or to live in a house that doesn’t actually meet their new needs. Aspire’s National Housing Programme prevents such situations by providing a fully accessible, temporary place to live while the individual is adapting their own home or looking for a permanent housing solution.

This year, Aspire has worked hard to increase the number of houses we have, enabling us to ensure more people are not denied their independence simply because of where they are living. We were delighted when, in September, we opened our first new house of the year in Southend. And this was followed up when our Cardiff House was handed over a few months later.

Perhaps more excitingly even than opening these new houses, we also formed new partnerships with housing associations around the country that saw building works commence on future Aspire Houses. Thanks to these, we’ll be adding to our stock up in Wakefield through Jephson Housing, The Guinness Trust have found us a property in Brighton, the foundations went in for two new Aspire Housing bungalows in Stoke-on-Trent and we have a house in Northampton lined up through East Midlands Housing.

We’ve finished the year with nine Aspire houses around the UK, but with future houses already going up brick by brick and ever stronger links being developed with housing associations, we’re confident that the work we’ve done behind the scenes this year will see the number of Aspire houses almost double in the next twelve months. For those currently doing their rehabilitation in the UK’s Spinal Centres, this will mean that they are more likely to be able to get out of hospital on time, to get back to their families, and to be able to get on with their lives.