Homes provide a foundation for our health and wellbeing. There have also been many occasions where good housing has contributed significantly to better health, wellbeing, and independent living.
Rooftop’s group chief executive, Boris Worrall has been working closely with Hereford and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, and is featured in the Chartered Institute of Housing’s (CIH) recently released paper, "Building Blocks for Life: How to Develop Effective Health and Housing Partnerships", which delves into the important connection between public health and housing.
Policy and legislative framework changes over the last few years have provided a more strategic and systematic way of working based on local places and communities. Partnership working across the public health sector and housing industry means that it can develop an effective response to problems and, most importantly, identify and address issues early on across shared geographies and populations.
Against the backdrop, this paper draws on the emerging picture of health and housing partnerships and such work being developed. The paper also outlines the key steps and considerations for building and maintaining successful partnerships across the sectors to benefit local communities and tackle health inequalities.
An initiative in Worcestershire was included in this paper.
In Worcestershire, a housing professional has taken on the role of Head of Housing and Health Partnerships within Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust.
Worcestershire County Council and the NHS funded the two-year position. The housing partners have invested funding into research of the outcomes from the partnership approaches through the Housing Association Charitable Trust (HACT).
Boris has represented housing associations on the project steering group. He noted a positive engagement and partnership working among housing associations and different partners in the paper. He also saw the initiative showed early signs of stronger partnership working.
“It’s also encouraging to see that HACT’s evaluation is showing evidence of a growing maturity in partnership working across the county,” Boris was quoted as saying in the paper.
Please download or go to this link to read the paper.
