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01 Jun 2018
How do we tackle the challenge?
Dementia is presenting a growing challenge for social landlords. The number of people in the UK with dementia is currently over 800,000 and 50% live on their own. Dementia affects 1 in every 14 of those aged over 65 and 1 in 6 of those over 80 years old, when you take into account the rising age of the social housing population, this is going to turn into something of an epidemic that the social housing landlords will have to cope with by making safe adaptations to homes that house those with dementia. (Predicted rise in dementia)
This will cause issues for social housing landlords, as a person with dementia is twice as likely to fall down as others of the same age group. The landlords will have to make sure their homes are well designed and adaptable for any clientele as safety features will need to be relatively enhanced as well as key design features for those who have lost their sight and or ability to distinguish certain colours and therefore objects.
How do we tackle these challenges? At AKW we like to have flexible, suitable solutions as we feel that the root of the problem may be in education about disabilities and ailments such as dementia. Social housing landlords may not know 100% what dementia is and what must be designed differently to critically meet a tenants’ needs. We have a guide specifically dedicated to the creation of dementia-friendly bathrooms, which lists all the conceivable design features you may wish to consider when designing a bathroom for someone with dementia. There is also a full length Whitepaper on the social housing ageing and disability crisis here. which details the challenges that are facing and will be facing landlords in the future.
