Innovation: Shared Lives Plus Homeshare

United Kingdom

AAI Domains:

• Independent, healthy and secure living (caregiving to older adults, mental well-being, improving access to health and social care, financial security)

• Participation in society (Inter-generational activity, social connectedness)

Shared Lives Plus was originally established in 1992 as the National Association of Adult Placement Schemes and through the 1990s it developed the Homeshare programme to provide personalised social care services to potentially vulnerable groups of people. These groups include people with learning disabilities, physically disabled adults, older people with dementia and people with mental health problems.

As the name implies, the Homeshare programme involves a co-housing arrangement between a householder, who typically owns their home but has some support needs or has become socially isolated or anxious about living alone, and a ’home-sharer’ who is typically a younger student or key public service worker on modest earnings who cannot afford housing in the area.

There are mutual benefits from this co-housing arrangement based on shared bills, helping out around the house and inter-generational social activity. These include a reduced risk of falls, better health and well-being for older people due to reduced social isolation and loneliness while it also reduce demand for housing, increases the affordability of higher education and eases recruitment in lower paid public service jobs.

Shared Lives Plus officers provide support to these forms of Homeshare face-to-face, online and through organising peer-to-peer support for Homeshare carers who share their lives with people from vulnerable groups. There are more than 8,000 Homeshare carers supporting more than 15,000 people and there is considerable interest in expanding the scale of provision as a higher proportion of Homeshare provision receives an excellent rating from the Care Quality Commission than any other form of regulated care.

In 2013, Shared Lives Plus with the support of the Cabinet Office, Social Finance UK and the Royal Society for the Arts started to work with four local authorities – Lambeth, Leeds, Manchester and Newham – to explore a social investment model for expansion. Investors would provide the capital for the expansion of provision and would receive dividend income based on the lower costs of Homeshare compared to other forms of social care provision. In 2015, the Lloyds Bank Foundation and the Big Lottery Fund each committed £1 million to support the expansion of the Homeshare programme with the first pilot scheme being run by Age UK Oxfordshire and Novus Homeshare for inter-generational co-housing.

There are several active ageing domains that Shared Lives Plus and the Homeshare programme can contribute to improving. Co-housing between householder and home-sharer promotes inter-generational activity, promotes social connectedness and thus reduces social isolation and loneliness which are major public health risks for older people. Homeshare carers provides personalised care giving to older adults based on building long-term relationships in a domestic rather than institutional setting and all forms of Homeshare are likely to contribute to mental well-being.

Homeshare carers can receive modest financial support from social security benefits or receive benefits in kind through co-housing with an older person depending on the arrangements established providing an element of financial security. The scope for social investment in this programme is also socially innovative as it provides the potential for expansion during a period of financial constraint in this area while also providing better quality outcomes for people in need.

Shared Lives Plus website