|
|
|
|
|
|
Home Improvement Agency Feature - Leeds
Care & Repair
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Ultimate Home
Delivery Service? - an interview with Bill
Rollinson, Director of Leeds Care & Repair
Leeds Care & Repair first opened its doors almost
20 years ago. Today it is a thriving agency employing 18
staff and offering a wide range of services, a different story
to the early days when it operated with just two staff based in
a back-to-back terraced house. Foundations went to meet
Bill Rollinson, HIA
manager, to find out how the agency developed from these humble
beginnings and to talk about wide range of services on offer from
gardening services to an incontinence pad home delivery service
...
Bill arrived at the HIA seven years ago just
after the HIA had won Big Lottery funding to carry out disabled
adaptations. The funding was for three years initially, later
extended to six, and transformed the service they could offer by paying for
3.5 extra staff and enabling them to start carrying out Disabled Facilities
Grant work.
"I love this
job. It's full of challenges and opportunities, but ultimately it's
about helping people. We get periods of development and expansion such
as when we won the lottery funding and then things change and we struggle
for a while. It's no wonder I've hardly got any hair left! But it's
always about the client's need and as long as you can remember that, it is
worthwhile".
One of Bill's key successes was securing
health funding to develop a falls prevention service.
"I attended this multi-agency
meeting about the increasing number of older people at risk from falls and
all through the meeting there was lots of talk about the problem but
frustratingly little action. So I challenged them to stop talking and
invited anyone who wanted to act to stay behind. Luckily I did not
end up sitting there on my own which I did worry about, but a couple of
others stayed and between us, we managed to start a small pilot scheme,
funded initially through the council."
The scheme involves assessment of people at
risk, making changes such as tacking down carpets and fitting
handrails, and then monitoring the people for reoccurrence of
falls. There are five Primary Care Trusts in Leeds
and all were invited to put funding into it.
"We felt that the
service was making a difference and that we could provide some evidence of
prevention. A health representative asked us at a meeting if we could
categorically prove that our service could prevent people falling. Well I
won't repeat my answer but let's say he was from one of the three PCTs that ended up funding the scheme. All the PCTs in the area now are about to be amalgamated but we
hope this is a positive step enabling us to provide a citywide
scheme. We were in the ludicrous situation at one stage where people
living on the side of our road our office is based could not access our own
scheme whereas people on the other side of the road could -
ludicrous!"
Bill is strongly committed to widening
services to meet the wider needs of his clients. This strength of
vision has led to the development of several schemes such as gardening and
shopping services, and these in turn have led to offshoots including a specialised home delivery service for people who need incontinence
pads. This idea came after realising that
people had to collect a month's supply from their local clinic and then try
and get that supply home.
"Because we are
independent and can be flexible in service development, we were able to grasp
this chance. We charge a fee of £5 per delivery and not only do we
deliver the pads, but also leave information about the HIA at the same
time. We intend to extend this service across the area, but do
other cities have this service? You assume so but you never know ..."
It's this ability to spot a gap in services and being
able to respond quickly to it that has really helped the HIA to
develop under Bill's management. But Bill is quick to point
out that following a social enterprise type model of business
development is not an all encompassing solution.
"I worry that the
social enterprise model is often promoted as an easy option but it's not
always that simple. Yes you can develop services this way but it does not
work when the customer has no funds. Not only do you have to subsidise your service for non-paying customers but
also for paying ones or you would price yourself out of the market -
you would be charging double in some cases. And you also need to look
at the real costs of providing a service to make sure it really stacks
up. It needs a lot of thinking about and all services usually need
some kind of subsidy."
Bill was also quick to point out that the last
year or so has thrown up one or two really tough challenges for the HIA to
deal with.
The first of these was the introduction of the
Regulatory Reform Order which saw the council abolish all of its grants and
set up a loan scheme. There was then a big delay in implementing the
loans scheme (a scheme that is only recently starting to take off), so
there was a period where there was nothing to replace renovation grants and
home repairs grants for older people who needed urgent house repairs, so
work in this area ground to a halt.
The HIA was eventually able to set up a pilot
home maintenance service through charitable trust funding, its own reserves
and some council funding. This has been really successful especially
after the council agreed that urgent work up to a value of £1000 can go
ahead subject to its meeting agreed criteria without prior approval.
It is also a flexible form of funding that can be used in conjunction with
other services such as energy efficiency.
In addition to this the council set up its own
adaptations agency just as the lottery funding that enabled them to carry
out adaptations was running out. This was a huge blow to the HIA:
"The population
in Leeds is 750,000, it is the second
biggest local authority in the country and the amount of work is
huge. We had hoped for a partnership arrangement but they decided to
carry out all the work themselves. Our fee income was affected although we
were able to carry on working with social services to carry out adaptations
for children. We are starting to pick up work again now through
the six ALMOs in Leeds
that manage the council house stock but they are about to be
restructured. It's hard to keep up but we already have 27 large scale
adaptations booked in for next year, which is plenty".
This combination of stopping grants and the
council taking adaptations back in house reduced the agency's income and
they also lost funding for their housing options post which looked at
alternative housing for people before a crisis, a post they are still
carrying as Bill is determined that they will find future funding for it.
In spite of all this, the HIA has a good
relationship with the council and at their AGM this year, they held a
special event at the civic hall and invited speakers including the Head of Neighbourhood and Housing, who is now coming to spend
the day with us as a result.
Asking Bill how he would sum up his role, he
was keen to stress the need for a good team of staff and a flexible
approach:
"As a job, it can
be frustrating. You see services that are needed, and it's so
difficult to get sustainable funding even though we all want it - the
client, the providers, the commissioners. Charitable trust funding is
getting more difficult. Health and Supporting
People are facing funding cuts. It's a real
issue. The decline in public money going into private sector renewal
is dramatically affecting the work we can carry out. Too many
assumptions are made about equity release - how many times can you
count it? It's a challenge to say the least but you need to keep an open
mind and be creative. Last year we helped more people than ever before and
our recent Customer Satisfaction Survey showed that we are delivering our
service well. But I enjoy this work and don't want to do anything
else."
|
