Impact Report: Care & Repair Cymru 2023-24

This past year has seen increased demand for our services as a cost-of-living squeeze has impacted older people’s wellbeing and ability to maintain homes.

2023/24 also saw older people hit hard by continuing record annual fuel bills, and while energy prices softened by the end of the period, even now, energy prices are 39% higher than winter 2021/22.

Demand for our services has seen another year-on-year rise. This long-term trend is due to rocketing costs for construction labour and materials, reduced levels of disposable income amongst older people, and more complexity of need – these issues are fully explored in our landmark report The State of Older People’s Housing in Wales.

A Year of Increasing Demand

Last year the services we delivered increased significantly compared to 2022/23, with 24% more services delivered to support older people to live independently at home, and 10% more home improvement works completed. We also saw a 19% increase in the value of works completed and a 32% increase in unclaimed benefits accessed for our beneficiaries.

• 67,606 combined service types were delivered to support safe independent living at home.
• £21.8 million of housing repair and improvement work was completed across all our services.
• 60,258 jobs completed.
• These jobs included 19,023 Rapid Response Adaptations, supporting hospital discharges, and preventing admissions to hospital and residential care.
• £12.56 million of unclaimed benefit entitlements were successfully claimed for older people across all our services, helping beneficiaries to better afford food, transport and pay energy and other bills.
• 3,249 people with sensory loss, stroke and dementia supported to adapt their homes and live independently through our specialist Managing Better service.
• 4,685 patients supported with a quicker safe discharge home through our Hospital to a Healthier Home service, leading to an estimated 25,968 bed days saved.
• 135 clients helped through our hardship funds, helping alleviate fuel poverty, tackling unsafe gas installations, and supporting older people living in poor housing conditions. This saw a total cost of works of £173,528, of which our hardship funds contributed £37,590.

Funding Successes

Funding is critical to the work we do. Therefore, we were delighted that Welsh Government, in recognising the pressures and impact of our work, increased Care & Repair funding by 6%. Additionally, there was an increase of £0.5 million during the winter period to support hospital discharge and preventative benefits of our Rapid Response Adaptations Programme across Wales.

We also achieved excellent in-year funding streams in 2023/24, with successful applications to:

• National Lottery for £100,000 hardship fund
• £20,000 from Wales & West Utilities for specialist CO alarms for Managing Better clients with sensory loss.
• Wales & West Utilities for £1.3m funding for Older Not Colder, a two-year fuel poverty project (2024-26). This project will enable us to provide more support to clients who are in fuel poverty, living in cold homes and struggling with energy bills.
• Over £560,000 from five Health Boards, to enable us to continue to deliver our highly successful and impactful Hospital to Healthier Home service, out of 17 main hospitals and numerous community hospitals across Wales.

A highlight of the year was winning the prestigious GSK and Kings Fund Health Impact Award. We were one of only ten winners from 520 third sector applicants across the UK, recognising the impact of our work on the health and wellbeing of the population. The prize of £40,000, professionally produced publicity videos, along with leadership training and networking opportunities was most welcome.

Overall, it’s been a satisfying year of achieving service delivery goals for our clients and growing as an organisation. As Chair and Chief Executive, we would like to thank everyone involved in our work during 2023-24; Care & Repair Agencies, Welsh Government, national and local partners, third sector partners, and all our funders.

We would also like to pay tribute to the fantastic staff team at Care & Repair Cymru for their hard work and commitment, and for making such a difference to the quality of life of older people across Wales.

Chris Jones, Chief Executive

Saz Willey, Chair of Trustees