Group homes for elderly people from black and racial minorities

Robin Currie

This social invention has established a new approach to community care for elderly people from racial minorities. The scheme has arisen out of an awareness of the failure of existing provision to meet individual needs adequately and sensitively.

Research showed that there was an extremely low take-up of welfare services by black elderly people. When they were unable to continue to live at home, the option of residential care was of a traditional kind in an old people's home, where care staff and other residents had little understanding of someone with a different cultural background, diet and language. Frail, elderly people were therefore often being faced with an isolated existence in an alien environment.

'The house was designed around the needs of the three individual people who would be living there. This necessitated for example the provision of a prayer room'

The new scheme set up by PSS (the Liverpool Personal Service Society) provides a social worker who works closely with recognised racial minority community associations and housing associations to establish small (three or four bedded) sheltered group homes for elderly people in the Liverpool area. The scheme aims to provide flexibility, with the design of the accommodation and the level of care provided varying according to need. In the first stage of the scheme, which has been set up with the Somali community, the house was designed around the needs of the three individual people who would be living there. This necessitated, for example, the provision of a prayer room. It has also meant that a Somali carer is employed to visit and provide help to the residents on a daily basis. The carer is able to talk with the residents in their own language, and understands their dietary and cultural needs.

The Society has now opened similar homes for elderly people from the Caribbean community and one for Chinese elderly.

The extent of the need for the provision of meals and care within the homes will be dependent on individual circumstances. Provision can be increased, if and when people become more frail, and may, if necessary, include a resident carer. One of the attractive features of the scheme is that it will enable a range of care to be provided within one particular setting. It offers an important opportunity to develop forms of care that are sensitive to individual language, cultural and religious differences, and that are responsive to the expressed needs of elderly people from racial minority groups.

Robin Currie, director, PSS, 18-28 Seel Street, Liverpool L1 4BE (tel 051 707 0131). This scheme won a Social Inventions Award.

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