We have embarked on a transformative journey aimed at significantly improving the wellbeing of our residents through a 'Healthy Homes' initiative. This proactive initiative is being launched at a critical time when the social housing sector is wrestling with numerous economic, political, regulatory, and impending legal challenges. This has led to a significant uptick in the task of managing our homes.

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Healthy Homes is built on a simple premise - the (now) widely accepted causal link between the ‘health’ - it’s physical condition - of a home and the health of its occupants. Improvement initiatives can no longer be confined to ‘housing’ OR ‘health’ they now need to encompass housing AND health as a system. Healthy Homes focusses on challenging this system which demands a system response. This is especially the case in relation to occupants with health vulnerabilities. 

So generally, Healthy Homes focusses on the need for 'places' such as Halton to develop system level interventions to these complex challenges.

Specifically, Healthy Homes must start somewhere. For us, for local reasons, that somewhere is child occupants of our homes. And specifically, children with poor respiratory health upon whom poor air quality – which may be caused by damp and mould – has a significant impact. 

Whatever, the specifics, Healthy Homes offers a principle-based approach which can be applied to address the issues of any vulnerable group – ask yourself which is yours?

Unveiling 'Healthy Homes'

Healthy Homes has emerged with four aims:

• reducing health impacts on children and young people
• alleviating health system burden
• enhancing the social value for the residents and their communities
• and improving the quality of homes, in line with future standards.

The initiative has garnered support from diverse organisations including Ethos Partnership, PropTech Innovation Network, Innovate UK KTN, and STFC Hartree. As a collaborative group, we recognise the potential for Healthy Homes to bring tangible change, particularly with the renewed policy focus on the correlation between 'home health' and 'occupant health'.

A System Intervention for Better Health Outcomes

The cornerstone of Healthy Homes is leveraging new technology. We plan to repurpose the use of existing property management and health management technologies to support a preventative approach to managing the health of our tenants. We plan to proactively identify and address health risks in homes, thus replacing the traditional 'report, react and respond' model with a more proactive 'plan, predict and prevent' approach. This shift involves the continuous risk profiling of homes and vulnerable children living in them, leading to improved health outcomes.

Collaboration for a Common Purpose.

The success of Healthy Homes hinges on diverse stakeholders collaborating around a shared vision of improving the long-term health outcomes of children and young people in our communities. We will look at the system in which the home and people’s health come together as a whole - involving all the services that support the health and wellbeing of our residents.

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Envisioning the Outcomes

The success of the Healthy Homes initiative will be gauged based on improved children's health, reduced system burden, increased socioeconomic value and improved property performance. At the initiatives culmination, a Service Redesign Blueprint will be developed, providing a vision for Healthy Homes' future and an implementation plan for necessary system changes.

Building a wider Innovation Community

We plan to extend the initiative in two ways. Firstly, by engaging other social housing providers to create a two-way flow of information to inform the System Redesign Blueprint.  Secondly, by formalising key relationships who for us are Liverpool City Region, Cheshire & Merseyside Integrated Care System, together with industry and academia, and of course critically our customers themselves. Working with this collaborative group, we want to shape the future for Healthy Homes

An Investment Plan is being developed to fund the initiative.  It identifies range of ‘investable tasks’ with clear value-add and realistic deliverables.  Initially, a ‘crowd funding’ approach will be across the stakeholder base. In the longer term the initiative will be leveraged to secure larger amounts from a range of potential sources identified within the collaborator group.

In Conclusion – your opportunity

Healthy Homes is a ground-breaking, strategic response to a complex, multifaceted challenge. It's about fundamentally redesigning our approach to health and wellbeing by adopting system wide working. Benefits will flow to our most vulnerable residents—particularly our children.

Our goal is to create home environments where children can breathe easy, both literally and metaphorically. The journey may be long, but the transformational potential for innovation in health systems makes it a worthwhile endeavour. We invite everyone to join us in this critical mission. After all, every child deserves a healthy home.

Shortly, we're going to be formally engaging with other providers and we'll be inviting you to join us in this initiative. Your role is going to be critical for the long-term success and broader reach of Healthy Homes, so stay tuned for more updates!

In the interim, if you're eager to hear more, or if you're not a provider but are interested in how you could lend a hand, don't hesitate to reach out. We're always open for a discussion!