Experts in ageing at Northumbria University, Newcastle, are
leading research to understand the role of home adaptations in improving later
life.
The Centre for Ageing Better has commissioned a team from
Northumbria to carry out primary research to gather real world evidence from
practitioners and elderly people with lived experience into how home
adaptations can contribute to improving living standards.
The team from Northumbria, and their collaborating partners
- Newcastle University, North Tyneside Council, Newcastle City Council and
Newcastle’s Elders Council - are a multidisciplinary team with a wealth of
experience in ageing, housing, health, home adaptations and service
development.
Using creative and innovative participatory methods, they
will work with older people, carers and practitioners to develop and deliver
the research and produce findings that have practical implications for quality
of life.
Cathy Bailey, Associate Professor Ageing at Northumbria
University, is leading the multidisciplinary research team.
She said: “In the UK many older people live independently at
home but with age, there is a greater risk of living with debilitating long
term conditions such as dementia, heart disease and limited mobility. Being
able to get on with every day activity and be connected locally and socially,
can help maintain health and a good quality of life.
“Timely, affordable, usable and well maintained home
adaptations, from hand rails to stair lifts, can support such independence and
delay a move to supported housing. Alongside robust research, more needs to be
known about the lived reality of home adaptations for older people from
different backgrounds and housing tenure. For example, what are their
experiences of home adaptations? what helps or hinders finding advice and
support? What about cost? How do older people decide what’s best? and what
impacts do home adaptations have on everyday life?
“Hearing from providers and practitioners, from those
working in local authority to a ‘handyperson’, is also important to understand
how home adaptations are perceived, used and maintained and thus how future
provision may be improved.”
Ageing Better takes a broad view on what constitutes
evidence. Ageing Better has already commissioned a team from the University of
the West of England, Bristol (UWE Bristol) and the Building Research
Establishment (BRE) to conduct a review of the published evidence into how home
adaptations can contribute to a good later life in November 2016. This research
project will gather evidence from practice and lived experience and be used to
help understand how the findings of the review of published evidence can be
implemented in the real world.
Rachael Docking, Senior Evidence Manager, the Centre for
Ageing Better said: “With the majority of older people living in existing
housing it is essential for us to look for the best solutions to adapting
current housing stock. Through gathering evidence from experienced
practitioners, who witness the challenges people face every day, and people
(and their carers), who live with these challenges every day, we can bridge the
gap between published research and the real world.”
The research will begin in Summer 2017 and findings from the
study are due to be published later in 2017.
