We have had to write to Panorama’s producers expressing our disappointment at the biased, one-sided nature of the programme.
We are fully sympathetic to the thousands of residents who fear life without their resident warden, but the programme failed to explain the reasons why resident staff have been withdrawn by many sheltered housing providers and gave insufficient weight to one of the main reasons - the European working time directive.
Imogen Parry was interviewed on this and other pertinent reasons - recruitment difficulties, unmet needs in the community among them - for more than an hour, but none of this was included.
Furthermore, there was no analysis of the unrealistic nature of the idealised 24/7 resident warden role or any coverage of how tenants can have genuine peace of mind and a sense of safety with a combination of support, telecare and call monitoring services.
The portrayal of people dying alone without a resident warden was sensational. Having a resident warden does not guarantee an immediate response, unless they are awake and on duty 24/7, which is both unrealistic and illegal.
There was also an inadequate unravelling of the differences between changes to services to save money, to redirect money and to improve quality. Many changes to resident warden services have led to increased provision of service to those most in need.
There is enormous pressure on providers, resources and society, which means that other service delivery models need to be explored - a key area being examined by the ministerial working group on sheltered housing, of which EROSH is a member.
Jo McTavish, chair, Essential Role of Sheltered Housing
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Readers' comments (3)
Joe Halewood | 12/02/2010 12:41 pm
The chair of EROSH in the above letter is placing faith in the ministerial working group in this letter from 5 months ago. Lets update.
That ministerial working group on sheltered housing of which EROSH is a member and had so much faith produced what exactly? Er, nothing! There isnt enough evidence they say and we need a longer study of floating support to evaluate it as an alternative!!
This raises two obvious points. The first is that the ministerial working group was not swayed by any view, or more cynically sat oh the fence of this political mess.
Yet the second is the key one. Why without any evidence of its suitability were wardens replaced with this floating support model? Babies being thrown out with the bathwater springs to mind. The only constant fact we know and have known about floating support is its price and i use price delibe4rately here as its cost is something very different.
In 2006 the ODPM published a report that compared the price of one hour of support and this comparison was the price that was in payment for all services and all client groups nationallyin 2003/4 and 2004/5. Because this report covered all SP payments nationally we couldnt get a biogger or more accurate survey.
Resident warden price per hour of support £11.36
Floating Support price per hour of support £23.02
So the price of using the floating support model alone is and was known in early 2006 to be more than double the price of using the resident warden model - and is was known and in the public domain for all to see including commissioners, providers, older persons lobbies and (if they knew where to find it) sheltered tenants.
So why the rush to change? And very very specifically why were these official figures not considered by the ministerial working group on sheltered housing????? And surely the older persons lobbies such as EROSH et al would know of these figures - and if they didnt then they are incompetent - so why didnt the older pesons lobbies present these figures to the ministerial working group??
They didnt as they advocate and propose blindly that the resident warden model is too 'pricey' and cant be afforded! Yet its price is less than half of the floating support model the main alternative!!!
I have used price as opposed to cost above because firstly it is correct and secondly because the cost can be measurd in more than price terms. The cost of moving away from the resident warden model is clearly seen in the uproar it has created in more than price terms and the legal actions that have followed that creates massive costs in price terms.
In other terms of comparison - does the floating support model provide the immediacy, the responsiveness and the proactiveness of a resident warden. Of course not it cant do. It is a vastly inferior service to a resident warden as a way of delivering support as it cant be anything else as it is by definition removed from the lives of those it aims to support.
In all other SP funded environments the primacy it seems is on delivering services that customers (tenants or residents) want. Yet in sheltered housing SP teams and commisioners stand out like a sore thumb as they do the complete opposite of this!
And the rationale they give for this is price!! Yet all SP teams and commissioners have the same official price figures above - so they are either massively incompetent or they are lying when they state this.
One final point - the unit cost figures in the official figures show that the price per hour of support for sheltered housing with a warden to be £11.36 per hour - THIS IS THE LOWEST PRICE PER HOUR OF ALL !!
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HenryP | 15/02/2010 5:29 pm
Jo - I'm inclined to agree with the points made by Joe rather than the ones you have made. The arguments for a resident manager/warden are idealistic and do not reflect the reality of what happens in real life. Before the EU restriction on manager's working hours, a resident manager was, in theory anyway, always available. But now, not only are they restricted to 42 hours a week, but if called out the cost become prohibitive and subsequently earn time off in lieu as well! Do your costs per hour include all the other costs which come with a resident manager? Even if he/she pays rent, the residents have to pay through the manager's increased salary. If a visiting manager only attends a development for 3 or 4 hours for 2 or 3 times a week, he/she could manage maybe 3 or 4 developments, so saving residents a significant sum. Do residents realise that vacating a manager's flat will, on sale to a new resident, help with service charges?The trend seems to be that both landlords and pensioners are realising that the annually increasing costs of service charges are no longer bearable and some changes must be made. This issue is probaly more relevent in developments where residents are required to be 'capable of independent living', than in those that need more care? An interesting point that I've not got to the bottom of is a definition of 'sheltered housing'. Is there a legal definition of it?
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Joe Halewood | 16/02/2010 11:56 am
Henry P - The figures quoted above are from a document published by the ODPM now CLG (ie responsible for SP) in 2006. The costs or prices are for the cost of one hours support and so do include back office and all found costs.
As far as EU Working Time Directive, the Uk negotiated a 7 year opt-out from its inception and as such that opt-out and likely conformity were known to the older persons lobbies and groups when SP payments were formulated. Briefly the opt out was because UK argument was that a worker could be passively on-duty when on-call and not actively on-duty. That argument was a non-runner and everyone knew that.
Anyone working on a 'on-call' basis has to be available - think of being on call on New Years Eve or Christmas Day, you cannot do anything or drink because on call means you may have to give advice or go into office or workplace. The notion that you can be on call but not actively on duty was firmly and correctly rejected by the EU.
Space and time limits withstanding, a number of models can be developed that allows the resident warden to remain and be more cost-effective than just being replaced with the vastly inferior visiting support. EROSH correctly in my view advocates spoke and hub variants as one example of this.
The simple argument that resident wardens are too costly is fundamentally flawed and simply stated without evidence - as the contrary position of FS we can see from above is more costly. The rush to floating support as a panacea by commissioners in local government was largely responsible for the fact that SP supported 200,000 fewer vulnerable people after 3 years, 110,000 less older persons among that figure.
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