The Extra Care housing market boom

Extra care housing is being positioned as one way in which the social care sector rebounds from the pandemic. Traditional care models are under the spotlight with falling care home occupancy levels and mounting pressures on budgets and hard-pressed staff. However, consumer demand for extra care and specialist retirement housing has been booming with 85% of providers reporting increase sales in the last 12 months.[1]

The extent of market diversification however is still in its early stages. Desktop analysis by IPC shows that currently there is a mismatch between supply and demand, with a projected shortfall of 61,000 extra care units across England by 2030.

The Extra Care Academic Partnership webinar:

IPC recently hosted a webinar as part of the IPC Academic Partnership offer, with 50 participants from across England and Wales who were keen to share and hear about the latest developments in the extra care marketplace. Participants included strategic commissioners, practitioners, and providers of extra care services who discussed the opportunities and challenges facing the sector.

Insights and comments from the webinar included:

• “It was great to connect with participants with experience of outcome based service delivery in care”

• “We are planning to introduce outcome based care delivery in 4 of our schemes later this year and would welcome the opportunity to connect with colleagues who have already been on this journey in extra care”

The webinar included a presentation from Shirley Hall, Head of Innovation and Wellbeing at the ExtraCare Charitable Trust (download above). Shirley set out the business case for purpose-built extra care schemes, also known as retirement villages, and explored the differing configurations of these schemes. The presentations also focused on the deployment of digital technology that has characterised much of the sector's response to the pandemic.

Conclusions:

The overall conclusions to the discussions were that:

• extra care has a growing place in the social care offer but commissioners and providers need to work together more collaboratively including across housing departments

• there are many examples of good practice and there is a willingness to share approaches as the extra care market evolves

• as commissioners increasingly look at market diversification, IPC is well placed to support both commissioners and providers in reimagining and realising sustainable consumer driven care markets

If you would like to talk to our experts about sustainable care markets, or would like to discuss the content of the webinar then please get in touch with Associate Consultant Jonathan Gardam.

For further information about the benefits of the Academic Partnership that includes 5 free days consultancy per year and invitations to our annual series of topical webinars then please contact Philip Provenzano, Assistant Director.

[1] Association of Retirement Community Operators (ARCO) 2021