Campaigning

Housing

A lack of suitable housing is the biggest single cause of delays in discharging patients from Spinal Centres, limiting those patients' return to active society and blocking beds in the hospitals.

Traditionally, following a Spinal Cord Injury, people will stay on a Spinal Centre for anywhere from six to eighteen months. The treatment they receive from the specialist staff is vital, but understandably most are eager to get home and get on with their lives as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, 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 being carried up steps to a flat where they are stuck until friends and family are available to carry them back outside again. Other patients will find themselves transferred to another hospital ward or a care home - this might mean living in an accessible environment, but one by no means conducive to independent living. Those placed in care homes fare particularly badly; in an environment geared towards older people, opportunities for socialising, searching for employment and undertaking normal everyday activities are extremely limited.

Over an eighteen month period working with one Spinal Centre, Aspire research discovered:

  • 44% of patients faced a delayed discharge. In almost half these cases, the primary reason for the delay was a lack of suitable housing.
  • On leaving the Spinal Centre, only 30% of patients returned to a suitable accessible home.
  • 33% of those leaving the Spinal Centre returned to their home, even though they were still waiting for adaptations to make their home suitable for their needs. Meanwhile, 20% were transferred to a care home or other hospital.

Quality Requirement 7 of the National Service Framework for Long-term Conditions calls for disabled people to have the accommodation they need; with a deadline of 2015, changes must happen now if the goal is to be achieved. Meanwhile, the outcomes enisaged for disabled people in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit's report Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People will never be reached all the while geographical mobility, employment opportunities, health and independence are limited by a lack of accessible housing.

Aspire wants to see:

  • The Spinal Centre discharge teams and social workers given more support in putting care packages together as these are inseparably linked to housing provision
  • Targets set by government for increasing the numbers of wheelchair accessible homes
  • All new homes built to a minimum of Lifetime Standard
  • Stamp Duty waived on all properties where the new owner will need to pay for accessibility adaptations
  • All social housing due for refurbishment under the Decent Homes programme adapted to improve accessibility.