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Aspire Research shows shocking housing conditions for those with Spinal Injuries
New research by Aspire reveals the shocking lack of suitable housing for people with spinal cord injuries. Our findings from three of the specialist Spinal Injury Centres in the UK reveals that:
- A quarter of all patients are discharged to care homes, hospitals or other institutionalised settings due to a lack of suitable housing.
- 59% of patients went back to their own home. But at one Centre, 64% of those who did so in 2007 were still waiting on essential adaptations when they returned home.
- Only 30% of patients discharged from one Centre in 2007 left to go to appropriate housing.
The lack of accessible housing in the UK means that many people face the prospect of delayed discharge or having to live in unsuitable housing. This can mean anything from returning to a house where they will have to wash in the kitchen because the bathroom is inaccessible, to only being able to leave the property when friends or family are available to carry them down to the pavement outside. Other patients will find themselves transferred to another hospital ward or even a care home. However physically accessible they might be, such solutions are not conducive to independent living, with those placed in care homes faring particularly badly. In an environment geared towards older people, opportunities for socialising, searching for employment and undertaking normal everyday activities are extremely limited.
The cumulative effects of unsuitable housing are far-reaching and long-term: reliance on others increases, often creating a sense of helplessness, while the individual’s health – both mental and physical – is often affected. Staff in the Spinal Centres teach patients a vast range of skills that they will need when they leave hospital, but without independence there is no opportunity to practice what they have learnt and the skills can be quickly forgotten.
Alex Rankin, Campaigns Manger at Aspire, says that more must be done to ensure that those leaving Spinal Injury Centres are not forced to live in totally unsuitable housing:
I recently spoke to a young man who had been told that when he was discharged he was going to be carried into his living room and left there, even though the lack of accessibility meant he’d be stuck there till someone could carry him back out. And we regularly hear from young people placed in nursing homes. The Aspire research shows that situations like these are all too common. Accessibility must be given greater priority in housing planning and attitudes must change so that placing young people in nursing homes is no longer seen as acceptable. Until this happens, many of those with spinal injuries will continue to have their independence taken from them, simply because of where they have to live.