Supporting independence
Supported living
We are one of the largest providers of supported living accommodation in the country for people with a learning disability, autism, or long-term ill mental health needs.
There is no doubt that this has been a challenging year for all our tenants and support providers who have coped incredibly well with the pandemic. For many, this has meant a significant change in daily routines. We have adapted whilst striving to maintain our high levels of service. We have continued to visit homes where tenants were happy for us to do so whilst ensuring adherence to government guidelines. In many areas of operation, we have adapted to virtual methods of working. For example, we carried out 496 new tenant sign-ups, mostly digitally.
We coordinated supported living tenant meetings online, made regular welfare calls, and arranged in-depth cleaning for tenants' properties where positive Covid-19 cases had been confirmed. We updated our supported living tenants on our Covid-19 response through our quarterly newsletters and conducted quarterly surveys of support providers.
We were proud to deliver a project in our Leeds area where we used funds from our Community Investment Fund to work with Artlink, a Yorkshire-based arts charity, to supply art activity packs to 20 tenants in the Leeds area to reduce isolation. The project is being offered to a broader number of tenants due to its success. We also supported a community garden project in Lancashire to help improve accessibility to outside space.
We provide high-quality housing solutions to help over 2,844 people remain independent in their homes. We arranged 138 adaptations to our supported living properties during the year to help people maintain their independence. These ranged from minor adaptations (such as the provision of handrails and access ramps) to major adaptations (such as the provision of wet rooms). We also carried out environmental improvements to 88 properties.
We aim to visit all our supported living properties at least once a year to ensure tenants receive a high-quality housing management service. We check on all aspects of the property to ensure it is safe and that the property still meets the needs of our tenants. This year we implemented a new digital form that ensures any actions arising from the visit are automatically generated. Many of the recommendations to improve this form came from a tenant scrutiny review undertaken last year.
Meet Glen
Glen lives in a supported living scheme. He lives in a ground floor property that is suited to his needs and health conditions. Before being a Progress Housing Group tenant, Glen was unhappy and taken advantage of by his previous landlady. He felt unsafe to leave his home and felt isolated.
Progress Housing Group has supported Glen to become more independent. Glen feels comfortable talking to the Group's Supported Living Team about any problems or issues he has, and he now feels confident enough to go out on his own. Glen loves planting in his garden, gets involved in tenant events and has a girlfriend and friends with who he enjoys spending time. Glen feels safe and supported in his new home.
We are a member of Learning Disability England and a founder member of the newly formed Learning Disability and Autism Housing Network.
Key Unlocking Futures
Support to help people across Lancashire build better lives.
Our charitable arm, Key Unlocking Futures (Key), provides practical and emotional support to young people experiencing homelessness, as well as a range of tenancy support services that work to prevent homelessness.
Key works to create trusting, authentic relationships with their service users to build their confidence and thrive. During the year, over 1,600 individuals received support from Key across Lancashire. The year has been filled with challenges intensified by the pandemic. Still, Key has adapted quickly, demonstrating remarkable resilience and passion for ensuring that people continue to receive the support they require now more than ever.
Throughout the pandemic, Key has continued to support young people experiencing homelessness. While most of the support services have been carried out over the phone, for some, there has been a need for face-to-face support. As a result, we have adapted Key's drop-in space to ensure it is COVID-secure so that this vital lifeline has remained accessible to those who need it.
The pandemic has provided even more challenges for some, including making it difficult for young people to sofa-surf, increased financial uncertainties, and tensions in families spending more time together in close confinement due to lockdown. Key continues to provide essential emotional support and advice and advocacy to ensure that young people do not get stuck in the downward spiral that homelessness can bring.
Throughout the pandemic, Key has continued to support young people experiencing homelessness.
Critical tenancy support
In partnership with Progress Housing Group, Key has continued to provide tenancy support services to those at risk of losing their home.
Plans have now concluded to transfer the Group's homelessness schemes support to Key, ensuring tenants benefit from Key's growing expertise in delivering asset-based approaches.
Meet Sue
When Sue's husband, Bill, passed away in November 2020, Sue started to struggle financially and accumulated debts.
Married for 49 years, Bill had always looked after everything for the couple, including their finances. Sue sought help from Progress and was put in touch with Key, who provided her with much-needed support.
Key has helped Sue fill out paperwork and helped her to apply for benefits and grants. Sue feels confident knowing that any time she has a problem or needs help, she can pick up the phone and call Progress for advice with any issue, no matter how small. Sue says, 'Whenever I need to call Progress Housing Group I know I get respect, and they treat me with the utmost care.'
Play therapists have adapted to new virtual ways of working, which has been beneficial.
Emotional health and wellbeing support for children
Much of Key's emotional health and wellbeing support for children and young people takes place face-to-face in school settings, so the closure of schools during the pandemic has proved challenging. Key's counsellors and play therapists have adapted to new virtual ways of working, which has been beneficial for some, but for some children, this approach has proved difficult. However, we are pleased to be delivering face-to-face support in school settings once again.
For several years schools have enquired about purchasing Key's counselling services directly. This is an opportunity for growth for Key, so we are pleased to have started the process of establishing this offer to schools.
The Base Community Centre launched an emergency response service providing food parcels to families.
The Base Community Centre
The Base Community Centre, managed by Key, has adapted to the community's changing needs during Covid-19. The Base Community Centre launched an emergency response service providing food parcels to families in need, re-opened the community café on a takeaway basis, and launched a breakfast club for local school children. October saw the successful launch of The Base One Stop - a membership scheme providing high-quality food at a minimal cost to over 180 families.
The Base Community Centre received a 'Gold' award for supporting their local communities in the 'Voluntary Group of the Year' category in the first Progress Housing Group Community Champion Awards.
We have worked alongside partner agencies, including NHS mental health services, to facilitate moves into specialist accommodation for residents needing additional support.
Preventing homelessness
Our supported housing provides safe accommodation and support for young people and adults facing homelessness. This year 44 people have been supported at Foundations and Inn2, with 20 residents from Foundations moving to alternative accommodation including private and social tenancies or with family and friends. Two residents moved on to independence from Inn2 and were accommodated under the Rough Sleeping Initiative pathway scheme. We have worked alongside partner agencies, including NHS mental health services, to facilitate moves into specialist accommodation for residents needing additional support.
At The Bridge and Parker House schemes in Chorley, we have supported 46 young people aged 16-20. Five moved on to have a successful tenancy, and 14 participated in family mediation to enable a positive move back to their family home. A further eight have relocated to other housing schemes in the county.
All the schemes have continued to provide frontline services throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, assisting with move-ons and receiving referrals into the schemes to ensure that we continued to provide much-needed accommodation for young people and adults facing homelessness.
As an organisation, we have united with other housing associations and homelessness charities to help end homelessness and signed up to the nine Homes for Cathy homelessness commitments.
We have also signed up to the NFH's Commitment to Refer to make a positive, public statement that shows housing associations are serious about ending homelessness.
All the schemes have continued to provide frontline services throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Providing refuge
Our priority is to continue providing support and safe refuge to those fleeing domestic abuse throughout the pandemic. This year we have provided safe refuge to 48 women and 59 children. We have successfully moved on 19 families to permanent new tenancies.
We have continued to deliver our Freedom and Recovery Programmes to women recovering from the effects of domestic abuse. Due to the pandemic, we have adapted to provide these as virtual sessions three times per week. We have also offered support to survivors of domestic abuse through our Life After Group. We have continued to run our outreach service, supporting both men and women who are experiencing domestic abuse but are not wanting to access refuge.
We have continued to provide the additional services we launched last year in response to the pandemic. We launched a new website, text messaging, and live chat service to assist women in the lockdown who needed to reach out for support but could not use the phone helpline safely. We provided families with various essentials, including face coverings and sanitising products to help keep them safe during Covid-19.
We worked in partnership with a local gym instructor to offer exercise classes to our families and put on activities to encourage physical and mental health and wellbeing. We also provided educational activity packs to keep our children entertained and support their education during the lockdown.
Each year we take part in the White Ribbon and 16 Days of Action campaign to end domestic abuse. This year we joined forces with the Police and Crime Commissioners office to project a giant white ribbon onto the side of Sumner House.
We have also pledged to Make a Stand against domestic abuse. The pledge has been developed by the Chartered Institute of Housing in partnership with Women’s Aid and the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance to enable housing organisations to make a visible commitment to support people experiencing domestic abuse.
This year, we reached a key milestone exceeding 50,000 connected customers.
Progress Lifeline
Progress Lifeline is our award-winning technology-enabled care service. We provide personal alarms, emergency home response and a range of other telecare services to support a wide range of people with different health conditions, disabilities or who are at risk of falling. During the year, the service handled 778,249 calls from people needing assistance or reassurance. We have also introduced a number of services to support our service users during the pandemic. This year, we reached a key milestone and have exceeded our aim of having 50,000 connected customers.
Our Emergency Home Response service continues to grow. Our team now supports over 22,000 people and attended 11,440 fall-related call-outs, of which 8,703 resulted in an assistive lift for those who were not injured. This has reduced ambulance call-outs and waiting times, an increase of nearly 31% on the previous year. We are now providing responder services throughout Lancashire, Yorkshire, Merseyside and Manchester.
We continue to work with the Health and Social Care commissioners in partnership with North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) and Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) through our assistive lifting service. We started working with NWAS as their dedicated resource for non-emergency falls assistance. With the increasing demands on the NHS and ambulance services, our response and assistive lifting provision is a vital service that strengthens partnerships with public services and improves the lives of many uninjured people who just need a little help getting back up after a fall.
The support we provide to the health service has further strengthened by participating in two hospital discharge initiatives - supporting early discharge.
This year, we launched our brand new website and e-commerce shop, so now we can deliver our vital services throughout England and Wales with our new self-install products. We also now offer the Cair Onyx pendant, which is the first jewellery inspired personal connected alarm.
We supported over 22,000 people and attended 11,440 fall-related call-outs, of which 8,703 resulted in an assistive lift for those who were not injured.
Meet John and Andrew
Progress Housing Group tenant, John, lives in Lytham St Annes, with his partner and care provider, Andrew. John currently has the Progress Lifeline Vi unit and pendant due to his health conditions.
John and Andrew were recommended to Progress Lifeline from their NHS support worker at Lytham Primary Care Centre. Before having Progress Lifeline, Andrew used to feel guilty if he ever went out and left John at home in case he needed assistance. Progress Lifeline provides enhanced care and gives both John and Andrew reassurance, empowerment and independence.
Andrew now has the freedom to go out shopping knowing that John is connected to his Progress Lifeline unit, whilst John feels reassurance that he is a button press away from valuable assistance. John and Andrew know they have help at hand 24/7.
Throughout the pandemic, Progress Lifeline made frequent welfare calls to John and Andrew to check in on how they both were. This support made both John and Andrew feel valued, and they looked forward to speaking to the friendly, caring Progress Lifeline team.
Meet Tony and Dawn
Tony lives with Meniere's disease and poor mobility, making him susceptible to falls. He also uses hearing aids, has a pacemaker fitted and has lung damage from repeated bouts of pneumonia.
He has carers who visit him along with his two daughters also help to look after him. Dawn and Nicola don't live locally to Tony. When her father's health deteriorated, Dawn and her sister decided to have Progress Lifeline installed for Tony. Tony has a fall detector, pendant, door sensor, heat detector and two smoke detectors. Dawn and Nicola now feel assured that their dad has emergency care available should anything happen.
'Progress Lifeline, for my sister and me, is that peace of mind knowing we've got 24-hour emergency care at the press of a button. I'd recommend it to the world.'
We work to the high standards and targets set by the TEC Services Association (TSA), with whom we have been an accredited member since 2006. We are very proud to be a TEC Quality - Quality Standards Framework (QSF) certified organisation, demonstrating the safety, innovation and quality of our services.
Meet Keith
Challenges at home and a complicated relationship with his son had resulted in Keith feeling depressed, lonely and anxious.
Keith reached out to Progress Housing Group for help. A domestic abuse specialist gave Keith advice, offered support and made referrals on his behalf.
Keith also suffers from seizures, so we moved him into a new property in one of our independent living schemes to have the reassurance of assistance if he needed it. Keith feels safe, happy and his health has improved since his move there.
Keith has made new friends and feels that he has got his own life back: 'I love my new home, and I am so grateful to everyone at Progress Housing Group who assisted me with the move'.
During the year, in consultation with the tenants, we have completed the refurbishment of Stanner Lodge in St Annes and Outram House in Bamber Bridge.
Independent living
We have 30 independent living schemes across South Ribble and the Fylde Coast for people over 55. Each scheme offers self-contained apartments with a range of communal facilities, support from an independent living coordinator, and 24-hour assistance through emergency alarm equipment.
During the year, in consultation with the tenants, we have completed the refurbishment of Stanner Lodge in St Annes and Outram House in Bamber Bridge by decorating, re-carpeting, and supplying new furniture to the lounge areas. Other improvements included upgrades to automatic front communal doors at Jubilee Court, Ashwood Court, and Outram House.
Tenants living within our independent living properties have the additional service of an activities coordinator who arranges social activities to promote health and wellbeing. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we have continued to support tenants with a range of weekly social distancing activities to reduce isolation and support wellbeing.
We have worked closely with the Health and Safety Team to ensure that the communal areas are COVID-secure and that risk assessments were in place and actioned.