I have never had a conflation before, but it is a trendy word to use, which is in the news a lot recently, so hear goes.   My last two blogs have been about the planners restrictions on building houses and the desire of many older people to retire to a bungalow.    Let’s try and conflate these two ideas.   The planners want higher density housing to limit the need for building on green field sites, which directly conflicts with the demand from older people for more bungalows.    Indeed the last thing the planners would want is lots of bungalows dotted all over the place😟     How about we turn the bungalow aspirations into large specially designed retirement flats, with level access throughout and lifts to all other floors.    Then add a range of facilities on your doorstep, including a shop, a coffee bar and some activity spaces.   That way you will have plenty to do, rather than being isolated in the country.   Let’s call it a retirement village !   Better still locate it in the town where you already live.    That way you will still be close to your family and friends and the planners will be able to keep their green belt.    So everyone will be happy 😄😄😄😄😄😄😄😄😄😄 and heave a lot more fun in retirement !

Conflation is not a bad idea !

This is my fourth report from the ARCO conference – July 2016. (See my earlier blogs “ARCO Conference Demographics”, “ARCO Conference Dementia” and ARCO Conference Marketing” in the archive dated July/August 2016.)

Regulation

The discussion on this subject was made up of a number of talks which embraced not just regulation but also funding models.   It’s the use of different charging approaches, many of which can be difficult to understand, that has led to the increased interest of the regulators.

The first problem is that there is no clear definition of where retirement communities fit in to the historical regulatory structures.   Many of the providers use different models and different terminology to describe their provision, but at the same time there are significant overlaps between providers.  This make comparison of schemes difficult.

The size and shape of schemes provided by different developers varies enormously.   As do the level of services offered.   This all makes it doubly difficult for the Regulators to see how accommodation provided by the ARCO members should be regulated.  The Care Quality Commission has in the past been preoccupied with residential care homes.  More recently they have broadened their remit to include hospital accommodation and at the other end of the spectrum, domiciliary care provided to people in their own homes.

Although many retirement housing and care providers now go beyond the provision of sheltered housing, they generally stop short of providing 24/7 care.   This means that essentially they are only providing domiciliary care to a limited number of residents, who continue to live in their own homes.

The Regulator seems to have concluded that in these circumstances they only have a “domiciliary care” remit and should not be involved in the physical fabric of the homes themselves.

However, where things get more difficult, is when you start to look at how people are charged to live in this accommodation.    The different financial models have in some cases led to criticism and claims of exploitation by residents who have purchased homes without realising the financial commitments they were entering into.   This has attracted the attention of a different Regulator, namely The Law Commission.

Different providers have all sorts of different ways of maximizing their charge for a property.   There are a host of different terms used which come under the collective title of “Events Fees”.   These can include:-

• “Exit Fees” or “Transfer Fees” – this refers to charges made when you leave the property either to move elsewhere or when you die.
• “Deferred Management Charges” – these usually relate only to the deferred charge for planned maintenance which has the effect of lowering initial service charges.   Providers charge these out at different rates, some of which are seen as punitive.
• “Assignment Fees” – this is a charge that goes to the freeholder whenever a property is sold on.  It is usually a charge of 1% of the purchase price although there seems little justification for this.
• “Sub Letting Fees” – this is a charge if someone chooses not to live in the property but to let it to someone else, or more frequently perhaps to sub-let it if relatives are unable to sell the property after the owner’s death.  Again these are typically charged at 1% of the rental value.

There is more information about these charges in my earlier reviews of some retirement housing providers which you can find by clicking on RETIREMENT HOUSING in the TOPICS LIST and looking for Retirement Housing Reviews.

My observation on the whole of this subject is that there is little appetite by the Regulators for more regulations in the sector.   However, there needs to be much more transparency about charges, particularly those where there is an element of deferment until the property is resold.   As the market stands currently, it is wide open to exploitation by unscrupulous developers who have their eye on immediate returns rather than long-term value for money for their customers.

This is my third report from the ARCO conference – July 2016. (See my earlier blogs “ARCO Conference Demographics” and “ARCO Conference Dementia” in the archive dated July 2016.)

Marketing

This was an extremely interesting talk by Doctor Margaret Wylde, the Founder and CEO of Promatura Group – a marketing consultancy that specialises in retirement communities.   Her presentation focused on the large retirement communities that have developed in the USA over the last 25 years and her insights were drawn from the lessons of a mature market in the USA.

The next two slides say it all about some of the retirement communities in the USA.  The first slide is a retirement community developed by the Del Webb Corporation in 1960 in Sun City, Phoenix, Arizona.   It shows a host of individual houses built around a central hub of facilities, all designed for older people.

However, that only shows half the story.  The slide below gives you the even bigger picture. Sun City is made up of a host of retirement communities, to the point where this particular community now houses 38,000 older people and covers an area of 37 square kilometres.

The photograph looks lovely doesn’t it.  It makes a nice pattern from the air!  But I’m not sure I’d like to live there.  Talk about ghettos for the elderly, this must be the ultimate in ageing communities.   What’s more, the Del Webb Corporation has gone on to build many similar, albeit slightly smaller communities, in many other parts of the USA.   They have also been emulated by many other retirement community developers.

What it does illustrate is the enormous desire of many older people in America to cash in some of their wealth, downsize and move away from the big cities and into sunnier climes. It’s like the move many older people made in the UK, to relocate to places like Torquay and Brighton or for the more adventurous, to retire to the Costa Del Sol or the Costa Brava in Spain.

Everything in America is bigger and land is a heck of a lot cheaper.   I’m not sure we could learn too much from this experience other than what not to do.   That’s not to say that we shouldn’t build retirement communities in the UK, but they certainly are unlikely to ever reach the American scale.

Some of the key marketing messages, which are relevant however, are:-

• Firstly, that it is the quality of lifestyle in the retirement community that creates customer satisfaction, not just the properties themselves;
• Secondly, the premium on property purchase prices can be up to 30%;
• Thirdly, don’t push service charges too high or risk losing 20% of the market;
• Finally, there is a great desire for a new life in retirement, providing the options closely reflect the customers needs, which requires sophisticated market analysis.

More to follow in my next blogs.

This is my second report from the ARCO conference – July 2016.

Dementia

The first thing to say of the prominence of this discussion on the agenda is that it leads you to feel that beyond demographics, this was the most important issue facing retirement communities at the current time – which I don’t believe it is.   From a panel of experts, the most knowledgeable speaker on this topic was Jeremy Hughes who is the Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Society.   Understandably he wanted to raise the profile of this illness, given that 850,000 people in the UK are estimated to have dementia.  One third of these live in residential care homes with the majority still living in their own homes in the community.  Obviously Mr Hughes wanted to ensure that as much retirement housing as possible is made available to people with dementia.   Although they were not represented at the conference, this is very much the message reinforced by Social Service Departments who have to deal with dementia in the community and would very much like to refer many of the more difficult cases to retirement housing providers, particularly those providing extracare accommodation.

The three other panel speakers who represented retirement housing providers were keen to emphasise how they provided for, or should I say coped with, people with dementia in their schemes.   They all accepted that they would look after people who developed dementia whilst living in their schemes but were rather more circumspect about how much they welcomed new residents into their scheme who already had dementia.   One of the providers was very positive about the Alzheimer’s Society’s “Dementia Friends Initiative” which promoted the use of volunteers to support people with dementia.   Whilst this is a great initiative, it’s not, in my opinion, a substitute for paid carers.   The speaker from The ExtraCare Charitable Trust talked very positively about their Enriched Opportunities Programme which is led by Locksmiths.   This is a very innovative form of personalised support pioneered and funded by the charitable trust.   Only 11% of ExtraCare Charitable Trust residents are thought to have dementia.

I’ve written a lot about dementia over the years and you can find all my posts on the subject by clicking on DEMENTIA in the TOPICS list.   More specifically you can find my post on Dementia Friends by clicking in the ARCHIVE for the 27 Jan 2013 .   There is also an explanation of  the ExtraCare Charitable Trust model of the dementia support in the ARCHIVE dated 13 July 2011.  

The elephant in the room at the conference, with the whole of this discussion is that, in my opinion, retirement housing is not designed for dealing with people with dementia.   I say this having managed a number of nursing homes which specialised in caring for people with dementia.   Dementia is an illness that gets progressively worse and therefore, whilst its possible to cope with people in the early stages, the behavioural changes of many people in the later stages of dementia are rarely accepted by other residents in the community.   They can also require a disproportionate amount of staff time.

I’ve seen this happen twice before.  Firstly when I managed lots of sheltered housing schemes; when in a community of elderly people living independently in their own homes, as individuals developed dementia and were no longer able to cope on their own, there was reluctance from Social Services to provide support in anything other than critical cases.   Secondly in extracare schemes which had additional care staff, there was a tendency for Social Services to understate peoples’ dementia support needs when they referred people.   Over time, as peoples’ dementia progressed, the whole character of the scheme changed and became more like a residential care environment rather than an active retirement housing scheme.

It’s for these reasons that I think retirement housing providers should be very clear about the limits of their ability to look after people with dementia.   Failure to do this will mislead prospective residents, may raise expectations of care and support that can’t be delivered and ultimately lead to people having to move on in later life from a retirement community where they had hoped to age in place.

More to follow in my next blogs.