ILC-UK held a report launch, panel discussion and drinks reception on international perspectives for stimulating the UK housing-with-care sector, kindly supported by the Associated Retirement Community Operators (ARCO), on Tuesday 30 January 2018 in London.

There are important questions around how prepared the UK is to meet the housing and social care needs of older people as population ageing continues to reshape society. Appropriate housing options to facilitate ageing in place can be a powerful tool to address these issues – enabling older people wishing to downsize to do so, and providing an efficient and preventative way of addressing health and social care demands. However, the UK lags behind a number of other countries in the provision of specialist later life housing.

To help identify what might facilitate or encourage more movement in this area, ILC-UK conducted research with support from ARCO to learn from countries with more success in developing their specialist retirement housing sector. We investigated this issue in published literature, through a stakeholder roundtable in London, and with a series of expert interviews in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, looking at how factors related to legislation, regulation, and the cultural context might influence housing-with-care provision.

The included presentations from report author and ILC-UK Senior Research Fellow, Dr Brian Beach, who highlighted a number of recommendations that could help the development of this sector.

Dr Brian Beach’s presentation slides from the event are available to view below: