Westgate Foundation Sheltered Housing Project

Description

Westgate Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation set up to provide the highest quality of services, supports and opportunities for older people living in Ballincollig and surrounding areas to enable them to enjoy quality of life within their own community. Services include Sheltered Housing, Daycare, Social and Active Retirement Group (SARG), Community Catering (Meals on Wheels),Transport and Senior Alert Scheme. Our guiding ethos is to ensure respect, equality, dignity, rights and care to all connected with our organisation.

Aim of Initiative

Westgate Foundation Sheltered Housing project initiative is established to provide quality, affordable and accessible housing to older people who are in need of accommodation. These houses are available to older people on the Cork City Council housing list, older people in need of transitional accommodation and older people wishing to move from their own private residence to a sheltered accommodation setting.

Who is it aimed at

The initiative is aimed at people aged 55 and upwards who have the capacity to live independently. Our 20 social houses are aimed at older people in need in housing who are registered on the Cork City Council Housing list. Our 6 Transitional Accommodation houses are aimed at older people experiencing homelessness. Our 10 Key Money houses are aimed at older people who currently own their homes and are looking to find accommodation more suitable to their needs as they grow older. We aim to provide affordable and accessible housing for all of our residents. The current age profile of our 36 residents is 60 – 93 years old.

3 Steps critical to success

1. Satisfaction and comfort for each resident. It’s very important to us that our residents enjoy living in their homes and their immediate neighbourhood. We strive to ensure this by (a)offering our residents a well and very highly maintained facility (both indoors and outdoors), (b) onsite support of our Housing manager who liaises with our residents on any matters of concern that they are experiencing (c) opportunities to engage with wider Westgate Foundation activities including our Social and Active Retirement Group (SARG), monthly social events and various programmes that we offer onsite including choir, drama and art classes (d) access to Personal Security Alarms and (e) support with accessing outside services including PHNs, ALONE, Age Friendly Homes support and occupational therapy supports where required. We also offer onsite Meals on Wheels to any residents wishing to avail of this service. Some of our residents also work and volunteer in our centre.
2. Safety, Security and Good Governance. We offer our residents a very safe and secure setting in which to live. We have onsite security 365 nights of the year and every weekend. During the work week Westgate Foundation Housing and Maintenance teams are available at all times to respond to our residents queries, calls and concerns. We also have CCTv installed on our grounds which gives increased sense of security to our residents. Compliance with all regulatory requirements including AHBRA, RTB, The Charity Regulator and Cork City Council is critical to our success.
3. Maintenance and Upkeep of each unit. We invest signficant time and resources into ensuring that our residents homes are kept in a state of good repair at all times, that all repair issues are responded to without delay and that the grounds of our Sheltered Housing facility are always pleasing to our residents.

3 Challenges in Planning / Delivery

1. Obtaining funding for sufficient staffing. It’s essential to the effective running of our Sheltered Housing facility that we have sufficient staffing that includes our Housing Manager, Security team and Maintenance team. It’s difficult to generate all of the funding needed to meet the wage costs of all of our staff. Our grant income from Cork City Council is very small – €30k per annum while the total costs of operating our facility is close to €192k per annum.
2. Demand for housing greatly exceeds supply in all areas of housing in our society including the demand for suitable housing for older people. We currently have an extremely long waiting list for our Key Money houses with very few alternative options available to people in need of these houses. Cork City Council manages the Social and Transitional Housing lists and many older people on these lists are in difficult and distressing living circumstances.
3. Ensuring proper supports and facilities are available for residents who can no longer live independently. Westgate Foundation is an independent living facility and we don’t have the resources to provide care for residents who need clinical and/or live-in supports to meet their personal care and daily needs. The only options currently available to residents whose health declines is to source nursing home accommodation. There is a need for step-up sheltered housing provision whereby older people can continue to live in communities with access to proper cares supports when their health declines.

3 Outcomes / Benefits

1. Full occupancy of all of our houses. It’s very important to us that our houses are fully occupied at all times with quick turnaround of any vacant houses that come on stream.
2. A pleasant, welcoming, accessible and enjoyable residential environment for all of our residents. We strive to ensure that our residents experience a really nice place to live by (a) having a very well managed Maintenance programme that attends to both the internal and external living environment of our residents (b) offering a friendly, welcoming, supportive atmosphere within our entire facility and (c) ensuring a high standard, well governed and compliant residential setting.
3. Safety of all of our residents. It’s of vital importance that our residents feel safe and secure in their homes. This relates not only to physical safety but also to emotional and psychological safety. We strive to ensure this by having an onsite year round security team on board, offering speedy access to securing personal alarms and providing daily responses from our Maintenance team to any hazards that arise. Emotional and psychological safety is safeguarded through the daily support offered through our Housing manager to our residents in addressing any issues of concern that arise for them and in welcoming and encouraging them to participate in the services and programmes on offer in Westgate Foundation as well as supporting them to access outside services where needed.