Plans to change the way Flourish Homes delivers services to its Somerset sheltered housing tenants have been caught on camera to ensure everyone has the chance to find out what will be happening to its schemes.
The nine-month pilot project, which starts in April, aims to move away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach towards tailoring care to the individual. To ensure all sheltered housing tenants understand what’s involved, Flourish Homes commissioned a local company to make a film which will be distributed to its residents on DVD.
“We invited our sheltered housing tenants to a special conference to introduce the project and get them involved in tackling their concerns and challenges. However we know that many residents don’t always make these meetings because they can’t get out very easily. So we needed to find a way to bring the information to them and a DVD seemed like a good way to do this,” explained Supported Housing Manager Liz Bezzant.
Copies of the DVD will be sent to all of Flourish Homes’s 21 sheltered housing schemes. Managers will organise coffee mornings with special screenings of the DVD and residents can then discuss its contents. Copies will also be given to residents to view at their leisure and Flourish Homes is organising televisions with inbuilt DVD players to be available to ensure residents can play it.
“We also hope that residents’ families will get involved by playing the DVD at home so that they know about the plans and discuss them with their relatives,” Liz added.
4-Reel Films was brought in to make the DVD. It filmed the tenants’ conference and interviewed staff and tenants afterwards about their thoughts on the new approach.
The project aims to decentralise the services on offer, changing the emphasis to geographical rather than work areas. Currently Flourish Homes has three departments which deliver support services: Sheltered Housing, Helpline and Support at Home. Three new area offices are to be created on three schemes in Frome, Street and Wells. Staff from all three departments will now work out of each office with one manager looking after the team.
“This means that support workers will know about all the services on offer with Flourish Homes and will be able to deal with all queries when they visit, rather than having to arrange for another person to call. It also means that people enjoying the Support at Home service will be more aware of what’s happening on the schemes, enabling them to join in with more activities.”
