From where I sit

[...] Over the next four posts I want to take a deeper look at the issue of social care. I'm hoping to include thoughts and views from others on Twitter, comments and email, so please [...]

[...] two blogs (part one and part two) both highlighted examples of what happens for some people in social care when the different organisations delivering their care fail to communicate properly. Whilst [...]

[...] Two weeks ago I launched a series of blogs on social care, explaining I wanted to look at this issue from a political, professional and personal [...]

[...] week's NHF Conference. But allow me to venture that it is actually the new health and social care ministerial team (and their successors) who will have the most profound effect on the [...]

[...] work of HACT attracted me. Going back to my experience in housing in the 1970s and 80s, housing associations were very much "of" community. You only have to look at the organisations like [...]

[...] enterprise, rather than (just) trying to alleviate indebtedness. We are ideally placed as housing associations to see when our tenants are in a position to use the money in a way that would benefit [...]

[...] orientation that our sector has had in the past. Let's take the business model first. Housing associations have traditionally had a "have and hold" business model. We own assets that are [...]

[...] more street homelessness. And I was also right about the increasing diversification of housing associations. 2012 was a year when building companies, care providers and private lettings agents were [...]

[...] , Julia Unwin talked with understanding and compassion about the real statistics behind welfare reform and that how as housing providers we needed to get much closer to individual families in [...]

[...] asks - especially at times when the world is about to get a whole load tougher because of welfare reform. As to the title, I have nothing personally against those who run Wonga; I know that many [...]

[...] housing associations keen to source new skills and revenue streams. I was totally wrong about welfare reform and growing inequalities leading directly to protest and riots - but I guess I'm pleased [...]

[...] I've recently left the board of the National Housing Federation after serving my six years there. I'll go into that in a bit more detail in a later [...]

[...] to work is on the train. It’s one of the many things that I’ll miss about leaving the National Housing Federation. Once on the train,I would colonise a table and spread the six inch high bundle of [...]

[...] I might have mentioned previously that my time working on the National Housing Federation has come to an end. I hugely enjoyed the six years I spent with the organisation and I’ [...]

[...] seen. My take on all this - and it's one I hope to share with colleagues in the National Housing Federation soon - is that as a sector we are ripe for transformational disruption, it [...]

[...] benefits of the physical regeneration. The naysayers' arguments about benefit for local communities being small, about prices being too high, about flats being prioritised over family [...]

[...] when it comes to showing the impact of housing associations undoubtedly beneficial work on local communities - the whole social value agenda? The answer is that they are entirely inadequate. The [...]

[...] , we didn’t do more with the few who cause such vile nuisance in the midst of local communities. The phrase “what we permit we promote” sprang to mind – something that at THT we [...]

[...] with colleagues from the council, police, fire, probation, health, education, as well as housing organisations. We were there to explore what partnership meant and heard examples of how service [...]

[...] the rising importance of social care. Firstly, at a professional level, the absence of housing organisations from the centre ground of social care debate continues to flummux me. From housing [...]

[...] review of attitudes in housing and public services. He didn’t see enough of housing organisations being led by their customers, he didn’t see enough innovation and he didn’t see [...]

[...] . Judging from the discussion it generated on my Twitter feed it would appear that the housing sector is perhaps not ready for an open and real discussion about how we might benefit from [...]

[...] One of the most notable things about the housing sector is that right now everything is changing. If history has taught us one thing it's that at a [...]

[...] of the work that we do - it's more to show that these are just some of the examples from a housing association that qualifies us to be an equal partner in conversations about health and social care in [...]

[...] for free. That’s true and the freemium approach wouldn’t work for all the stock in a housing association’s portfolio. However, while we have a number of properties that remain empty, no matter [...]