by J. Biggs and C. Tang, Maidenhead, England,
Open University Press, 2007, 360 pp., £29.99, ISBN-13: 978-0-335-22126-4

Teaching for quality learning at university

Developing social care: the current position

Sheltered housing schemes for older people took a new turn in the UK with the community care policy of the early 1990s giving care provision for people living in such schemes. There is relatively little research on what sheltered housing schemes provide and what makes them work well. Data was gathered in relation to sheltered housing provision for older people in the north Antrim area of Northern Ireland through 10 focus groups with tenants and 16 questionnaires administered with managers of schemes. Tenants valued the independence and choice of sheltered housing in comparison with institutional care. They also highly valued the social interaction with other tenants, fostered by activities such as coffee mornings, regular lunches and social events. Tenants often helped each other with transport and when sick. Tenants of schemes in small towns were generally satisfied, because of access to shops, churches and other services. Transport was an issue for many, particularly in more rural areas and in relation to attending hospital appointments. Scheme managers were often available to tenants for long and anti‐social hours. The home care arrangements were generally regarded as satisfactory although there were criticisms of the limited hours for tasks and the skills of some care workers. Some scheme managers thought that the publicly‐funded homecare service would be more efficient if the staff were managed from the housing scheme. Appropriate social activities and effective care arrangements are an important aspect of supported housing, as well as the independence it offers. Consideration needs to be given to access to services in locating new schemes.

Sheltered housing and care for older people

The aim of this study was to examine sheltered housing tenants' views of health and well-being, the strategies they adopted to support their well-being, and their use of health and social care services through a Health Needs Assessment. Sheltered housing in the UK is a form of service-integrated housing for people, predominantly over 60. The study used a parallel, three-strand mixed method approach to encompass the tenants' perceptions of health and well-being (n = 96 participants), analysis of the service's health and well-being database, and analysis of emergency and elective hospital admissions (n = 978 tenant data sets for the period January to December 2012). Tenants' perceptions of well-being were seen to reinforce much of the previous work on the subject with strategies required to sustain social, community, physical, economic, environmental, leisure, emotional and spiritual dimensions. Of the tenants' self-reported chronic conditions, arthritis, heart conditions and breathing problems were identified as their most common health concerns. Hospital admission data indicated that 43% of the tenant population was admitted to hospital (886 admissions) with 53% emergency and 47% elective admissions. The potential cost of emergency as opposed to elective admissions was substantial. The mean length of stay for emergency admissions was 8.2 days (median 3.0 days). While elective hospital admission had a mean length of stay of 1.0 day (median 0.0 days). These results suggest the need for multi-professional health, social care and housing services interventions to facilitate sheltered housing tenants' aspirations and support their strategies to live well and independently in their own homes. Equally there is a need to increase tenants' awareness of health conditions and their management, the importance of services which offer facilitation, resources and support, and the key role played by prevention and reablement.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/hsc.12398

Older UK sheltered housing tenants' perceptions of well-being and their usage of hospital services.

This paper examines how some elderly Chinese tenants in a cluster of housing schemes in the north of England differed in their perception, consciousness and management of time. It examines how there was too much or too little time for some of these tenants and how time played a part in their personal and social identification arising from their experiences of migration. Lefebvre's concept of rhythmanalysis is intended to be a transdisciplinary theory that could be used to theorise ‘everyday life’. The writer superimposes this concept on the activity and disengagement theories of ageing to add meaning to the ethnographic data gathered and argues that ageing is not a simple matter of activity or disengagement. These Chinese elders coped with change through a flexible and ongoing process of adapting to different rhythms of life. This paper aims to contribute to the empirical understanding of ageing for a minority in Britain and to present a novel theoretical perspective on research approaches to ageing.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0144686X13000287

The rhythm of ageing amongst Chinese elders in sheltered housing

Over the past decade government policy has emphasised the need for effective and active partnerships between employers and higher education providers (DfES, 2003; Wedgewood, 2007; CBI, 2008; BIS, 2009) to meet the requirements of a globalised knowledge economy. This paper discusses the findings from a research project undertaken at the University of Salford which sought to explore how: Personal Development Planning (PDP) input can support the development of employability skills for part-time sponsored students. Employer engagement could be drawn upon to enhance such provision. Informed by the Appreciative Inquiry approach (Cooperrider 1986, cited Reed, 2007), the methodology included a questionnaire survey of two student cohorts and thirteen semi-structured interviews with organisational development managers from sponsoring organisations to explore perceptions of the value of PDP within day release provision and potential benefits to the organisation. A follow up focus group with employers explored further staff development needs and the potential for PDP processes within Higher Education (HE) courses to complement their existing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and in-house staff and workforce development strategies. Savory, Conroy and Berwick The role of Personal Development Planning (PDP) for employer sponsored students The paper concludes that dialogue between academic staff, students and sponsoring employers is valuable in developing shared understandings of the role of PDP activities within HE curriculum, the potential benefits for individual professional development and the workforce development requirements of organisations. Employers participating in the research stressed the importance of ‘functioning knowledge’ (Biggs 2003, cited Walsh, 2008) and discussions highlighted the potential for PDP to provide a bridge between the discipline specific knowledge which forms the main focus of HE courses and the trans-disciplinary knowledge produced by the largely informal learning that occurs during the course of professional practice (Gibbons et al., 1964). The joint dialogue enabled exploration of perceptions of the difference between CPD and PDP and identification of how links between PDP and appraisal processes in the workplace could be strengthened, including suggestions for practical activities which could be incorporated into HE programmes and employers’ performance review processes.

/pdf/the-role-of-personal-development-planning-pdp-for-employer-jer5ek9wk2.pdf

The role of Personal Development Planning (PDP) for employer sponsored students - an exploration of how PDP learning activities can support CPD and workforce development requirements

Sheltered housing tenant satisfaction

This paper reflects on a research project funded by a consortium of leading sheltered housing (SH) providers and their regulatory body, the Housing Corporation. The project aimed to ascertain which aspects of SH older people perceived to be central to their satisfaction and the methods they judged most appropriate to measuring this. We outline key policy developments of importance to SH (specifically the development of performance measurement regimes), and changes in the nature of SH, which are driving providers to re-evaluate how they measure user satisfaction. We discuss the aims of the project, our methodology and findings, and conclude by raising critical questions about the process of measuring satisfaction within an increasingly managerialised housing system. We argue that this favours standardised methods of information gathering (such as questionnaires) rather than engage with clients in order to develop methods and systems capable of eliciting qualitative issues of concern to them. Our conclusions are, we believe, applicable to health and social care provision, where similar tensions exist around performance measurement and user satisfaction.

'Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted'--towards a critical exploration of modes of satisfaction measurement in sheltered housing.

Julie Savory

Papers

The role of Personal Development Planning (PDP) for employer sponsored students - an exploration of how PDP learning activities can support CPD and workforce development requirements

Sheltered housing tenant satisfaction

'Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted'--towards a critical exploration of modes of satisfaction measurement in sheltered housing.