The Royal College of Occupational Therapists welcomes the Centre for Ageing Better’s report today showing how small home adaptations can reduce costs by millions of pounds. It provides further evidence to support the recommendations in our “Living, Not Existing” report; that showed how involving the older person in decision making, seeing the whole person and focussing on what they can do, not what they can’t, actually results in a better quality of life for older people and lower costs for taxpayers.
In the face of this overwhelming evidence, it is vital that local authorities reshape social care services to shift the focus towards preventing frailty. With a predicted black hole in funding for social care services predicted to top £2bn it is imperative that councils now focus on what has been shown to reduce demand and deliver better quality services.