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This paper aims to explore what can be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic about adaptable, functional housing design that supports seniors’ resilience. This paper considers how physical and design features enable seniors to stay safe, develop coping strategies, give and receive care and maintain social connections.

A qualitative research strategy incorporating thematic analysis was used, involving interviews and one focus group with seniors and interviews with housing providers and community organisations supporting seniors. Forty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with 54 seniors aged over 60 years living independently, not in aged care. Interviewees were selected to cover a range of ages and housing circumstances. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with 20 organisations.

The physical, amenity and design aspects of the living environment that support seniors’ well-being and resilience during a pandemic are: the ability to receive essential goods and services in the home; sufficient space and storage; flexible and adaptable living spaces; access to private indoor and outdoor space; ability to garden and grow food; having an outlook or view; functional heating, ventilation and appliances; and dwelling location allowing access to green spaces, food stores and services. The ability of housing to facilitate social connections is a fundamental enabler of seniors’ resilience.

This paper contributes to knowledge about physical and design aspects of the dwelling that enable protection and care in a pandemic and how that can help to future-proof housing. Its focus on enabling seniors’ resilience through housing recognises the growing significance of structural population ageing for housing design and delivery and the central role of housing to ageing-in-place policies that underpin health and welfare provision.

Housing‐related support funded by Supporting People has developed in line with traditional service areas relating to criminal justice, health and social care. This means that opportunities for developing integrated services geared to meeting the needs of mentally disordered offenders have been limited. Using a case study to explore service needs, a rethink of commissioning and support roles is recommended for forensic mental health services.

Connected Care, Turning Point's model for involving the community in the design and delivery of integrated health and well‐being services, aims to involve the community in the commissioning process in a way which fundamentally shifts the balance of power in favour of local people. The model has been tested in a number of areas across the country, and previous articles in the Journal of Integrated Care have charted the progress of the original pilot in Hartlepool. Cost‐benefits of the approach are now becoming clearer. Implementation of a new community‐led social enterprise in Hartlepool began in 2007, and today its Connected Care service provides community outreach, information, access to a range of health and social care services, advocacy, co‐ordination and low‐level support to the people of Owton. Key lessons, from Hartlepool and elsewhere, have centred on the value of making the case for service redesign from the ‘bottom up’ and building the capacity of the community to play a role in service delivery, while also promoting strong leadership within commissioning organisations to build ‘top‐down’ support for the implementation of outcomes defined through intensive community engagement. The new Government's ‘localism’ agenda creates new opportunities for community‐led integration, and the Connected Care pilots provide a number of learning points about how this agenda might be successfully progressed.

This article is the second which the Journal of Integrated Care has published about the Hartlepool connected care pilot. It takes up the narrative from the launch of the community audit report in February 2006 to the project's successful bid to become one of the 26 DoH social enterprise pilots some 12 months later. It seeks to understand the barriers encountered as the pilot sought to implement a service model based on an audit of local needs and ambitions. It identifies the need for support outside the local policy systems if holistic, community‐based initiatives are to be initiated and implemented. In addition, it considers some of the implementation dilemmas that the pilot posed for local agencies and that it had itself to face and resolve during this second phase in its development.

Homelessness is a colossal issue, precipitated by a wide array of social determinants, and mirrored in substantial health disparities and a revolving hospital door. Connecting people to safe and secure housing needs to be part of the health system response. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This mixed-methods paper presents emerging findings from the collaboration between an inner city hospital, a specialist homeless medicine GP service and Western Australia’s inaugural Housing First collective impact project (50 Lives 50 Homes) in Perth. This paper draws on data from hospitals, homelessness community services and general practice.

This collaboration has facilitated hospital identification and referral of vulnerable rough sleepers to the Housing First project, and connected those housed to a GP and after hours nursing support. For a cohort (n=44) housed now for at least 12 months, significant reductions in hospital use and associated costs were observed.

While the observed reductions in hospital use in the year following housing are based on a small cohort, this data and the case studies presented demonstrate the power of care coordinated across hospital and community in this complex cohort.

This model of collaboration between a hospital and a Housing First project can not only improve discharge outcomes and re-admission in the shorter term, but can also contribute to ending homelessness which is itself, a social determinant of poor health.

Coordinated care between hospitals and programmes to house people who are homeless can significantly reduce hospital use and healthcare costs, and provides hospitals with the opportunity to contribute to more systemic solutions to ending homelessness.

Too many health and social care services are failing to meet people's complex needs. In this paper, ‘complex needs’ is presented as a framework to help understand multiple interlocking needs that span health and social issues. The concept encompasses mental health problems, combined with substance misuse and/or disability, including learning disability, as well as social exclusion. The paper outlines a strategy for promoting the well‐being and inclusion of people with complex needs. At the heart of this strategy is a new kind of delivery model: connected care centres, a type of bespoke social care service, a model which has been endorsed by the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU). In addition, the paper describes how new responses from existing services can promote better support for people with complex needs, such as a reformed commissioning process and a new ‘navigational’ role for the social care worker.

This paper aims to describe the RE-COV study and to summarise its findings. It focuses particularly on the implications of lessons learned for national, operational and building design policy and practice.

Invitations to take part in a RE-COV study survey were emailed to the operators of 270 retirement villages and older people’s extra care housing schemes in England which were known to the Elderly Accommodation Counsel. Completed questionnaires were returned from 38 operators, online or electronically, between December 2020 and February 2021.

Survey findings evidenced the breadth and depth of the operators’ responses, the effects these had on residents’ lives and worthwhile changes which could be made. Outcomes demonstrated included higher levels of protection for residents from the COVID-19 virus compared to older people living in the general community, and high levels of residents feeling safe, supported and reassured.

The findings are used to offer evidence-based recommendations for housing operators, building designers and policymakers which could enhance resident, staff and operators’ health and well-being, both going forward and during possible future pandemics.

There is evidence that retirement villages and extra care housing provided safe, resilient and supportive environments during the first year of the pandemic which were highly valued by residents.

This study addressed a knowledge gap regarding how the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted housing-with-care stakeholders, evidencing specifically how operators had responded, and what their response achieved.

Hartlepool's connected care pilot is a partnership between residents, councillors, Turning Point, the NHS and the local council in one of the most deprived wards in England. A local audit was conducted by residents, demonstrating the relevance of information held by the community about its needs, ambitions and interactions with services. A new service model aims to provide integrated responses to complex need, commissioned through a local partnership agreement and delivered through a social enterprise. The implementation will demonstrate how far real power is shifting to local people.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

Housing and support are essential if people misusing drugs and alcohol are to address their substance misuse and their other physical, mental and emotional health needs. If their housing and related support needs are not addressed at each stage of the treatment journey, they are much less likely to enter or remain in treatment. This article outlines the policy context, discusses barriers in service development, explores the role of housing with support for substance users and gives examples of imaginative commissioning and provision. It is based on recent work for the Department of Health Care Services Improvement Partnership.