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Approximately 100,000 people in the UK aged 75 and over have concurrent dementia and sight loss, but current understanding of their experiences, needs and preferences is limited. The purpose of this paper is to report on a research project that explored the provision of social care and support for older people with both conditions.

The project was a collaboration between the universities of York, Worcester, Bournemouth and Cambridge, supported by the Thomas Pocklington Trust and the Housing and Dementia Research Consortium. Data for this paper were drawn from focus groups held in 2013 involving 47 professionals across the dementia, sight loss and housing sectors.

Thematic analysis identified five main barriers to providing high-quality, cost-effective social care and support: time constraints; financial limitations; insufficient professional knowledge; a lack of joint working; and inconsistency of services. The requirements of dementia and sight loss often conflict, which can limit the usefulness of equipment, aids and adaptations. Support and information needs to address individual needs and preferences.

Unless professionals consider dementia and sight loss together, they are unlikely to think about the impact of both conditions and the potential of their own services to provide effective support for individuals and their informal carers. Failing to consider both conditions together can also limit the availability and accessibility of social care and support services. This paper is based on input from a small sample of self-selecting professionals across three geographical regions of England. More research is needed in this area.

There are growing numbers of people living with concurrent dementia and sight loss, many of whom wish to remain living in their own homes. There is limited awareness of the experiences and needs of this group and limited provision of appropriate services aids/adaptations. A range of measures should be implemented in order to support independence and well-being for people living with both conditions and their family carers. These include increased awareness, improved assessment, more training and greater joint working.

People living with dementia or sight loss are at high risk of social isolation, increasingly so for those with both conditions. Services that take an inclusive approach to both conditions can provide crucial opportunities for social interaction. Extra care housing has the potential to provide a supportive, community-based environment that can help residents to maintain social contact.

This paper adds much-needed evidence to the limited existing literature, and reflects the views of diverse professionals across housing, health and social care.

Extra care housing has developed from sheltered housing and has increasingly been seen as a popular option by policy‐makers for a number of reasons. These include the inability of conventional sheltered housing to be an adequate solution for a growing population of very old people, the decline in popularity and high costs of residential care and perceived problems with older people staying in mainstream housing. There is, however, no agreed definition of extra care housing, even though a growing number of government grants are becoming available for this type of housing. This is causing confusion for providers and for older people and their families who are not sure exactly what is provided. This lack of clarity means that this form of housing has become an erratic and piecemeal form of provision.

This article refers to common values and principles underlying personalisation and housing, and the importance of personalisation for providers like Hanover (a leading provider of housing and support services for older people). It also refers to challenges that personalisation presents for supported housing services, such as extra care. Possible responses to these challenges include a re‐emphasis on listening to what residents ‐ as well as commissioners ‐ want, an honest appraisal of the concept of choice and its implications, especially in services such as extra care, and asking whether people might still be asked to choose a ‘package’ of core services, in order to retain sustainable models that will support other people now and in the future. The article then describes the Housing Associations' Charitable Trust's (hact's) Up2Us project, a key initiative to put supported housing service users centre stage in commissioning and purchasing care and support, in which Hanover and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham are among the partners.

The purpose of this paper is to formulate recommendations from international and local examples to aid the design and delivery affirmative housing and care options for older LGBT individuals in England.

This paper combines a desk-top review conducted by the author with personal views and recommendations for practice by discussing the levers within both the Care Act and Equality Act for greater LGBT participation in the design, delivery and evaluation of housing with care services.

The provision of LGBT affirmative housing and care options for individuals in England is currently limited. International and European evidence suggests that multi-faceted, person-centred approaches are central in delivering affirmative services to older LGBT individuals.

This paper adds to a growing literature on minority housing and care services. The author draws on both a professional and personal interest in facilitating the development of LGBT affirmative services in England.

Four routes or pathways have now been identified by which individuals may come within the scope of PSA 16 National Indicator 149, which is concerned with monitoring efforts to achieve settled accommodation for individuals with significant mental health problems. This article focuses on their needs and the identification of those with mental health needs as seen through these four principal routes. An understanding of these four possible pathways can help to identify areas for priority action, local delivery chains and partnerships, and also highlight some of the challenges and risks in and for delivery.

This chapter discusses the major steps and issues related to the inclusion of public services in inequality research. Empirically, it investigates how the income distribution in countries changes when the value of publicly provided services to households is included. The authors consider five major categories of public services: education, health care, social housing, childcare and elderly care. On average across OECD countries, spending on these ‘in-kind’ benefits accounts for about 13% of GDP, slightly more than the spending on cash transfers – but with considerable cross-country variation. Broadening the income concept to account for in-kind benefits considerably increases households’ economic resources. But public services also contribute to reducing income inequality, by between one-fifth and one-third depending on the inequality measure. This chapter suggests that publicly provided services fulfil an important direct redistributive role in OECD countries.

The fundamental role of housing in community care has long been acknowledged. However, progress in achieving any real integration of housing and social care has been slow. This article reports the findings from the Crossing the Housing and Care Divide programme, which was jointly sponsored by the Housing Corporation and Anchor Trust. The programme aimed to stimulate developments in services for older people that would enable housing to become part of community care, lead to greater inter‐agency working, enhance the involvement of users in the planning, monitoring and delivery of services and deliver a high quality of service more cost‐effectively. The programme offers many practical lessons for the effectiveness of services.

This article calls for better co‐operation and co‐ordination between mental health and housing support services, and greater recognition of the important role of social housing in community mental health care.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of housing in adult safeguarding under the Care Act (2014) in England.

The paper provides a summary of the implications for housing organisations and their staff of adult safeguarding under the Care Act. The implications, underpinned by the six safeguarding principles, are explained within a summary of the legal and practice framework for safeguarding in England.

The paper draws upon research by Imogen Parry (2014). It argues that past failings in adult safeguarding in England have placed it high on the housing agenda and that housing has a key role to play in adult safeguarding.

Housing organisations need to be proactive partners in local multi-agency arrangements for adult safeguarding. Staff and contractors need to receive training in line with their role to raise awareness of their safeguarding responsibilities.

The value of the paper is to increase and maintain awareness of the need for housing engagement in the adult safeguarding agenda.

This paper aims to examine housing need for older people and people with dementia, with reference to Scotland. This paper also examines policy responses and tensions arising from such need and looks critically at the evidence of care needs and what older people want in relation to later life conditions, including dementia.

Taking the Being Home: Housing and Dementia in Scotland report (2017) as a baseline descriptor, the authors have collated evidence from a range of sources to help them examine what has changed in terms of policy, practice and population ageing. Set against this backdrop, using desk-based analytical methods, the authors interrogate existing planning processes and systems in Scotland.

Scottish Spatial Planning has a policy blindness on the overwhelming evidence of the housing needs derived from an ageing population. Policy focus is geared towards the amount of housing supplied, rather than appropriate types of housing, leaving older people with little choice of suitable accommodation. A key area to improve is in establishing greater co-operation and policy synthesis between health, social, housing and planning functions. Broad policy ambition must be transferred into detailed reality for older people and people with dementia to benefit.

The integrated approach and in-depth analysis, linked to planning policy and housing need, is highly original and much needed.