Focus on housing needs

We have a range of specialist housing to support people with care and support needs to live as independently as possible, at home and in their community.

During the past year we have transformed the way we manage our vacancy management processes, which helps avoid delays in people’s case, and costly vacancies for our care providers.   

Improvements include:  

• A new matching process for people and vacancies, which has reduced the amount of time our social workers spend finding a suitable placement, making it more efficient for our teams and the care providers, and reducing the time people wait for a placement.
• Better oversight of what is available. Being able to see every option available, along with the identified unmet need of people on our waiting list, enables commissioners to plan and design new services.
• Enabling people to request a change and transfer in their accommodation if it no longer meets their needs.

Last year we successfully helped 13 people lead independent lives by placing them in extra care housing, where they have access to a care provider and round the clock emergency help, if needed. This has helped save around £165,000 in care costs.

Our focus for 2024-25 continues to realise our aspiration of building more extra care housing in Torbay to meet our ongoing demand for this type of support, with a new scheme planned in Torquay.

We are also looking forward to opening a new supported living scheme in summer 2024 with the opportunity for 11 people with a learning disability to live independently in their own accommodation with access to a shared living space for socialising.