Has the death knell of sheltered housing been sounded?

'Sheltered housing as we know it today may not be around in 15 years' time', Ken Bartlett, patron of the 20/20 project, has today warned.

Mr Bartlett's warning follows the dissemination of the 20/20 consultation paper to senior housing professionals in housing associations and local authorities across England last week. The consultation, which has the support of nine national organisations, is seeking to create a vision for future housing and care services for older people.

Mr Bartlett said: 'The 20/20 Project has come along at a critical time when over a tenth of housing services that help older people with support needs face being decommissioned. Unless housing providers speak up, and do so now, the death knell of sheltered housing will have been sounded, and it will be older people who suffer as a consequence.'

Mr Bartlett continued: 'There is a contradiction in Government policy: the Department of Health's vision for adult social care is preaching a more proactive, preventative model of care; while Supporting People teams, dictated to by the ODPM, are cutting funding for the bricks and mortar of sheltered housing.

'But the beauty of sheltered housing is that it offers low level supportive and preventative living for over half a million older people. The demand for it is likely to increase because by 2020, the old and very old will make up nearly 30 per cent of the population.

'Service commissioners do not seem to realise that people positively choose this type of housing, which has knock on funding implications for community and health services. The 20/20 Project therefore wants to see a more coherent approach to older people's housing and care services, one which truly offers choice and independence, and is not based on competition with other community services.'