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Search for£46m village in Chellaston to be the future of care for the elderly
Tuesday, August 05, 2008, 08:10
Instead, residents in an extra-care village have their own apartment, their own kitchen and their own community.
The areas they do share sound more like something from a hotel or holiday brochure – a Jacuzzi, gym, beauty salon and craft workshop
And all this with the added benefit of care staff on site 24 hours-a-day, caring for residents as they would in a care home – helping them to wash, eat or take medication.
This sort of village has been around for several years in other parts of the Midlands, such as in Lichfield.
Now, Derby City Council plans to bring the successful model to Derby and will work with the Extra Care Charitable Trust to create a complex for people aged 55 and over, subject to planning approval.
It would be the first such “village” in the county with all its own facilities, including a village hall, gym, computer suite, arts and crafts centre, restaurant, lounge and coffee bar, hairdressing and beauty salon, landscaped grounds and a greenhouse. Other such villages also include a shop.
Those benefits would be commercially run with the possibility of some subsidies for things like the gym.
People in sheltered accommodation currently often need to leave those homes when they need someone to be nearby 24 hours a day but sheltered housing only has wardens, not care staff.
However, under the extra-care scheme at Chellaston, fewer people would need to leave their homes because the care would be on site.
At its other sites, the trust provides the care staff but it has not been decided whether that model would be repeated in Derby or whether the council would provide the carers.
Ruth Skelton, cabinet member for adult services and health at Derby City Council, said that other cities had started to build extra-care villages several years ago.
“This type of scheme has certainly proved its worth elsewhere,” she said.
“I visited a scheme in Lichfield which has been very popular but that was set up quite a while ago, whereas ours would be brand new.
“We are perhaps a little behind in Derby but this is a great scheme.”
The city council was awarded £3.5m of money from the Department of Health to put towards the scheme in Chellaston, which would be created on land next to Woodlands Farm.
The total cost of the scheme would be around £46m.
The rest of the money would be put in by the Extra Care Charitable Trust which is working with the council.
The trust is a Coventry-based charity which works with local authorities and housing associations to build and run extra-care sites.
Of the 250 apartments planned for Chellaston's village, 30% would be for sale, 50% available for shared ownership and 20% for rent.
The city council would be able to have nomination rights over the rentals, meaning a board of people from the authority and other partners, such as the Primary Care Trust, could choose who goes into the apartments.
The charitable trust would get back its investment through the sale of flats and rent from the apartments.
Details of prices have not yet been worked out.
In other areas where similar schemes have been created, the trust has funded the village centres, including the gym and village hall facilities, through appeals in the community.
A spokesman for the trust said: “We often launch appeals for funding, which comes in the form of donations, and also local businesses in the regions and corporate donors support us.”
An application has not been lodged yet for planning permission but the aim is to have contractors on site before the end of next year, so first residents could move in during 2011.
The village would be a private estate and its facilities would also be opened to other elderly people in the area.
There are smaller extra-care sites being developed in the city but none to the same scale as Chellaston's proposed village.
Tomlinson Court, in Alvaston, has received £3.8m of Department of Health funding towards the £5.5m scheme, which will have 38 apartments and be managed by Housing 21, a major housing provider, with care staff provided by the city council.
The council will put in £100,000 and the balance, £1.6m, will be provided by Housing 21.
And care staff have been brought into the Retail Trust Leylands complex, in Broadway, to provide extra-care. The estate is also undergoing redevelopment of certain areas to extend the extra-care it is able to offer.
In total, the council, through the creation of more developments, aims to have 240 extra-care scheme flats by 2009.
Extra-care is seen by the council as the future for how elderly people will be cared for, giving them dignity and privacy but also a sense of community.
When led by Labour last year, the authority wanted to close Bramblebrook House care home, in Mickleover, to fund such a development.
It said there would not be the demand in the future for such residential homes, as elderly people's expectations for housing and demands increased.
Now the new Liberal Democrat-led council has agreed not to pursue the closure, while a review of all care homes is carried out.
But the authority has also not ruled out a place for care homes and specialist care, such as for dementia.
Ms Skelton said she was committed to developing more extra care.
“The plans for Chellaston will be different from the extra-care sites we are working on, because those are adaptations of existing buildings, whereas this will be built from scratch and be a village-style development,” she said.
“I have seen such schemes elsewhere and they mean people can stay in their own homes for longer, which causes them less disruption.
“They also have a great mix of people, from those who need no care to those whose needs are quite intense and that mix is important in creating a real community.”
The vision for Chellaston has been welcomed by Help the Aged.
Lizzie McLennan, senior policy officer for Help the Aged, said: “We support anything which improves choice for people.
“We like to improve the generational mix and so would welcome things like opening some facilities up which encourage different ages, such as a creche.”
A spokesman for the Extra Care Charitable Trust said it aimed to make its villages affordable and that they were open to people on benefits.
In fact, the trust provides benefit staff at its villages to help people claim all the help they are entitled to.
The spokesman said: “In one of our schemes in Northampton, we actually identified £500,000 in unclaimed benefits.
“We do everything to ensure it is affordable for people.”
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proposed plans for village: The Lichfield site, left, an illustration of how the Chellaston site could look, above, and, right, the site as it is today
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