At last we can bring you news of this year’s Art Awards.

Over the last week, the following letter has gone out to previous years’ entrants:

 Dear Entrants and Friends

I am delighted to report that we have secured funding for the 2012 and 2013 Art Awards from the John Ellerman Foundation. This enables us to sustain what will be our 19^th and 20^th years organising this very popular event. We very much hope that you will continue to enter and support Art Awards and that you will encourage your friends to get involved. Art Awards is an integral part of our work as a housing information and advice charity enabling EAC to promote the importance of well informed housing and care options in later life. It is very important that we increase entries this year.

Art Awards On Line

Art Awards is moving towards a new format and it is one which is increasingly important to all of us. 2012 will see the Awards start to develop as a fully ‘online event’. This will take a couple of years to achieve and builds on the online option, which many of you already use, first developed in 2009. This means that we want as many of you as possible to submit your entries to the Art Awards website (www.eacartawards.org.uk )on the internet. In developing the Awards this way we hope that you will become even more adept in using the internet or if you are not familiar with computers that you will enlist the support of family and friends to help upload photographs of your work. This will help to develop the skills and familiarity with the internet that so many of the services and shops we use today seem to take for granted. Hopefully Art Awards will prove an enjoyable – and not too frustrating! – route to using a computer.

A New Prize Giving Format

The theme of the 2012 & 2013 Awards is ‘Getting Connected’. Last year nearly a third of you entered in this way, that is, online, using a computer. This year we hope you will respond even more enthusiastically

and enable us to reach 50% and in 2013 rise to 75%. Don’t worry if you do not have access to a computer you will still be able to submit your photographs to the judges in the usual way by post. But if you can

find someone to help please do enter into the spirit of this new approach.

What this also means is that for the first time we will not be showing the entries or holding the Awards at a gallery. The costs and organisation associated with a gallery event, including receiving and returning entries, are really too onerous for a small charity.

So we have a new idea. We are exploring having a prize giving at an iconic venue such as the House of Lords, probably early December. So plan your Christmas shopping visit to London now! The idea is that winners would be invited to attend as usual but your entries will be shown on a screen rather than hanging on a wall or sitting on a plinth. We hope to add to the sense of occasion and celebration of being a finalist.

Your Art Awards Team

We are so fortunate in the team we have so I know you will be delighted to learn that our two Art Awards volunteers Marg Millington and Rosalind Barnes, who do so much to make the whole project come to life,

will again be in close cooperation with you. A key aim this year is grow the EAC ‘artist’s community’ and we hope to be invited and to make visits to see some artists progressing their work. Over the next 2 years

we shall also explore ways to develop wider engagement in Art Awards including classes and events. We also have some ideas for Art Awards becoming a more ‘rolling’ initiative. More of that in due course .And

of course we shall continue to send you newsletters. Let us have the names and addresses of friends who might also wish to hear from us.

Marg and Rosalind will again be joined by Siobhan Kneale who has been closely involved with Art Awards in recent years. We will be integrating Art Awards more closely with other things we do at EAC and also keeping you in touch about these. Blanche Beavan (Blanche.beavan@eac.org.uk  020 7820 3755) will now be the EAC manager with day to day responsibility for the Awards. The rest of the EAC team will also play their part. We very much hope you will do your bit by getting your entries in and by enthusing others to do so.

Finally, you may also wish to know that we are exploring new ways to encourage multiple entries this year and to increase the number of prizes. There will be some new categories to attract interest. More of that in a May newsletter and in forthcoming ‘blogs’ and on Facebook. So if you were waiting to hear what was happening with Art Awards…. let me confirm that a starting date for Art Awards will be announced once we have made a number of changes to the Art Awards website and have new systems and guidance for you in place. This is likely to be in June and you will be able to submit your entries from July onwards. We are likely to be judging late Autumn and holding the prize giving event early December (exact dates to follow)…all that remains is for you to get your work under way. When systems are in place we will give the go ahead for entries.

Best wishes

   John Galvin
   Chief Executive EAC

We have a lot of work to do now, to make AA 2012 a reality….. starting with this website. Keep your eyes open…and please get to work!

30 Finalists selected

Nominations were received between 1^st October 2011 and 31^st March 2012 from 2799 residents of all forms of housing for later life throughout the UK.

The finalists will discover which awards they have won (bronze, silver and gold) at the Awards celebration on 21 May 2012 at Legal & General London offices.

See the A-Z list of the 30 finalists / winners

This year EAC and its sponsors took the risk of putting a cost on the nomination packs. The new £10 +Vat cover mainly the production and mailing costs of the packs.

No one could predict how the introduction of a price would affect the popularity of the Awards, but a sharp reduction on demand was expected. And it did happen: in 2010, 2140 residents had taken part, rising to 3517 in 2011 and dropping back this year, but only down to 2847, exceeding our expectations.

This very satisfactory result is due mainly to the effort and good will of housing providers and scheme managers who bought the nomination packs for their residents and encouraged them to play the game. The proportion of unused nomination packs has happily dropped from an unsustainable 66% down to an estimated 25% or less.

The winners will be pleased that their residents value their housing and the services they receive.

The managers of unsuccessful schemes will also be able to benefit from this year’s Awards by ordering a Provider Report which highlights strength and weaknesses, as perceived by the residents whilst protecting the residents’ confidentiality. Indeed it has become clear that many groups of residents play the nomination game knowing full well that with the poor scores they are entering, winning was not on the cards. Their main motivation was to seize this opportunity to discuss and express their views.

After the Awards’ celebration (21^st May 2012), EAC will contact the housing providers of the least successful schemes, suggesting that may wish to order a Provider Report.

The Housing and Dementia Research Consortium (HDRC)

The Housing and Dementia Research Consortium (HDRC) is a membership group that has come together to achieve timely, high quality research focused on ‘what works’ in order to directly influence policy and practice in relation to housing with care for people with dementia. It was set up in 2008 in order to develop robust evidence on dementia care in a Housing with Care (HWC) setting and now has a membership of over 90 individuals and organisations. Members comprise providers and commissioners of housing with care and an array of other interested parties including academics, architects, advisors, researchers, policy makers and third sector organisations. The core members are five well-established providers of HWC: Housing21, Anchor, The ExtraCare Charitable Trust, Hanover, MHA. Between them, they represent the five biggest providers of HWC for older people in the UK.

Aims of the HDRC:
 To shape the agenda of research into HWC to ensure its relevance and usefulness to housing providers and people with dementia;
 To work together to have greater weight when applying for research funding;
 To deliver more ambitious large-scale, multi-provider research;
 To share findings from in-house research and evaluations.

The HDRC has developed a list of key research questions that are priorities for the consortium. The research coordinator, together with other members of the HDRC and external partners, is actively developing research proposals and seeking funding. She has also conducted a small in-house study of provision for people with dementia within HWC schemes from among the core members that will help inform future research development.

The HDRC website can be found at: http://housingdementiaresearch.wordpress.com/
If you would like further information or would like to join the HDRC, please contact the Research Coordinator, Dr Julie Barrett: julie.barrett@housing21.co.uk; 0300 790 1122

The deadline for nominations has been reset to 30th March 2012. Now that the date of the Awards Celebration has been fixed to 21st May, we can extend the nomination period by another month. Despite the new cost of the nomination packs, orders for them are piling in, and so are the submissions. To date we have received nominations from 223 groups of residents, such as the one on this photo, sent by the residents of Westmead, Barnsley, an extra care scheme managed by South Yorkshire Housing Association Ltd.

Wondering when Art Awards 2012 will be launched?

Wondering if they will run in 2012?

WATCH THIS SPACE in the New Year, when we hope to provide you with some long-awaited answers!

01 December 2011, Austin Court, Birmingham

by the National Housing Federation

Older people’s housing and support is everyone’s business, and anyone interested in housing has an interest in older people. Join us at this conference to discuss the important issues that housing associations will face in an ageing society.

More information on the National Housing Federation's website at

http://www.housing.org.uk/events/find_an_event/general/breaking_the_mould_–_supportin.aspx

The Care Quality Commission has published the results of its 2011 survey of people who use community mental health services

Key findings include
 
“The vast majority of participants said:

•that they were listened to carefully, treated with respect and dignity and that they had trust and confidence in the health or social care worker they had seen most recently.

•that they could contact their care co-ordinator if they had a problem, and that their care was well organised.

•they had an out-of-office contact number they could call for emergencies.

The results showed that people needed to be more involved in some aspects of the provision of their care.

•Around a quarter of those who were prescribed new medication said that they were not told about the possible side effects.
 
•There remains a proportion of respondents who said that they did not know who their care co-ordinator or lead professional is.

•A tenth of those with a care plan said that they did not understand it. ”
Cynthia Bower, CQC chief executive commented on the survey:
“The new cross-government strategy for mental health outcomes, “No Health Without Mental Health”, was launched in February. One of its overall aims is to improve outcomes for people through high-quality services that are accessible to all.
“The results of the community mental health survey this year and in the future have been identified in the strategy as one of the key sources of information to assess progress in improving people’s experience of care and support.
“I think it’s fair to say that those who took part in this year’s survey were positive about some aspects of the services they received but many found that some of their needs were not fully met.
“I know we are entering a period when resources may be stretched even further than they have been before. But I urge all those who provide community mental health services to strive to maintain, and where possible raise, the levels of care. I also call on commissioners of services to study the survey results and use the levers that are available to them to improve outcomes for people who use these services.”
More information is available on the Commission’s website
http://www.cqc.org.uk//newsandevents/pressreleases.cfm?cit_id=37515&FAArea1=customWidgets.content_view_1&usecache=false
http://www.cqc.org.uk/aboutcqc/howwedoit/involvingpeoplewhouseservices/patientsurveys/communitymentalhealthservices.cfm

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has launched a new initiative “Acting Together” that will allow the commission to call on people who use health and care services to advise on and contribute to its work. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of all health and adult social care in England. “Acting Together” will allow people who use health and social care services to be involved in the Commission’s inspections and in visits to monitor the use of the Mental Health Act. 
More information is available from CQC’s website:http://www.cqc.org.uk//newsandevents/pressreleases.cfm?cit_id=37489&FAArea1=customWidgets.content_view_1&usecache=false

The Department for Works and Pensions  is consulting on proposals to change the way Housing Benefit assists those living in supported housing (including sheltered housing) within the social and voluntary sector. Further information is available on the department’s website;
 
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/consultations/2011/supported-housing.shtml

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is conducting research into how well the home based care and support system in England protects the rights of people over 65. The full report will be published in November 2011 however the Commission has published emerging findings which highlight many cases of inadequate care. Problems that have been brought to the Commission’s attention include:

• Inadequate time to deliver care
• Lack of control over timing of care visits
• Failure to deliver adequate homecare
• Lack of staff awareness and training
• High staff turnover
• Lack of complaints and low expectations

Baroness Greengross, a commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission said

"Many older people up and down the country receive good quality care from committed, respectful care workers. But our evidence suggests that in some places care workers are faced with too much to do, in too little time, sometimes without proper training. This is causing standards to slip and is placing older people's human rights to privacy, autonomy and dignity at risk, sometimes in very serious ways.'

Source ECHR press release 20th June : http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/news/2011/june/inquiry-reveals-failure-to-protect-the-rights-of-older-people-receiving-care-at-home/