High-quality Housing for Older People

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:39 pm on 4 December 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 1:39, 4 December 2018

The Member makes a series of good points there. Since 2002, with the support of £187 million, 43 extra-care schemes have been completed, providing over 2,000 homes for older people, where they can maintain their independence and avoid the need to move to residential care or admission to hospital. We're also investing £105 million capital in the integrated care fund to develop accommodation-led solutions to health and social care. That will support older people to remain living independently in their communities, and, every year, we invest £106 million to support local authorities and housing associations to improve the quality of the social housing stock in Wales through the Welsh quality housing standard.

In particular, though, the Member mentions technological advances that are of interest. We have a number of schemes around Wales, which I've had the privilege to go and see, using something called LoRaWAN technology, which allows you—obviously, with the tenant's permission—to collect data around things like whether the lights have been turned on or whether a kettle has been boiled and so on, and allows you to be alerted to the fact that the person's pattern of movement has changed and, therefore, somebody can call much more speedily than if you were just doing that as a routine check. So, I'm very impressed so far with some of the schemes that we've looked at, and we've been supporting them from our digital budgets, actually, in taking forward such innovative schemes. We're looking forward to being able to mainstream some of that technology in the very foreseeable future.