Staying at home – the advantages of a dementia friendly home
The number of people being diagnosed with dementia is on the rise. In less than 40 years time there will be 1.7m people living with Dementia. Currently there are 800,000 people with dementia in the UK.* When the illness is late onset – usually over age 60, with symptoms slow to appear – diagnosis is…
Read More
Labelling the homeless – is there an elephant in the room?
When is someone no longer homeless? When do you stop referring to homeless people and starting thinking of them simply as people? These are some of the questions raised for me by a long-term research study which followed the futures of over 260 formerly homeless people. I recently attended the launch of Rebuilding Lives: Longer-Term…
Read More
An international insight – altruism in Jordan
A local bus station in Jordan’s capital city of Amman served as the meeting point for myself and twelve others from across the globe. We would then take a 30 minute drive to the residential area of Al Zarqa – Jordan’s second city and our home for the next 2 weeks. We were to spend…
Read More
Build lives as well as homes
Social investment – focusing on the social impact as much as any financial return – is not new to housing. From the likes of William Hesketh Lever developing a model village for his Sunlight soap factory workers in 1888 to the Cadbury brothers in Bourneville, this Victorian philanthropy – enlightened self-interest perhaps – spawned the social…
Read More
Innovative Investment Report out now
Our new report ‘Innovative Investment’ (#SocialInvestCH) is out today – Tuesday 25 November. The report argues that social investment should be used to fund Innovative and even untested housing schemes. This timely report comes at a time of growth in the Social Investment sector and of an increasing unaffordable housing market. Yes this may be a more risky…
Read More
The social investment arguments are not black and white
It was reported in October that at a recent event Kathy Evans, CEO at Children England, said social finance is “absolutely the wrong thing” for the voluntary sector. She went on to say that the voluntary sector is the only part of British society not yet “saddled with debt” and that pursuing a social finance…
Read More