All the nominations for this year’s Awards have been entered. More than 3000 residents of sheltered and retirement housing, including extra care and assisted living, have responded, an increase of almost 60% over last year. Nominations are sent in the form of the score sheets completed by the residents while playing the nomination game (card game) to share their views on their housing schemes and the services they received.

EAC has again received several testimonies from residents, scheme managers and wardens, confirming that this form of consultation enjoyed by most participants.

Cheques for £100 are being sent to the lucky 20 raffle winners drawn from the 847 nominations received from groups of residents. The prize money is to be used for the enjoyment of the residents of each lucky scheme on the recommendation on the winning group.

The 34 finalists, will be announced on this website in late November or early December

Read more on the Housing Awards webpage

A Celebration of Housing for Later Life

At last the retirement housing sector has its own dedicated awards. At the inaugural event at Lords on Feb 4th around 350 guests, including designers, providers and managers of retirement housing and over 100 elderly residents will be present to see 32 Awards handed out across 11 categories of retirement housing and housing with care. Uniquely, the finalists and the awards were determined by residents and not the industry –upholding the central aims of empowerment and listening to consumer feedback.

The list of winners and a special page on this event will appear shortly on our website

The EAC Quality of Information Mark (QI Mark) was launched in December 2007 to encourage housing providers to supply EAC’s National Database of Housing for Older People with more and better details of their retirement housing schemes and developments. This was particularly relevant for Housing-with-Care and Extra Care housing schemes, where available services can include meals, domestic help and full personal care similar to that provided in a residential care home. 

At the time of the launch we decided to give the QI Mark to hundreds of schemes which had completed and returned our extra care questionnaires during the previous 12 months. This allowed us to populate this website with the QI Mark logo, and thus make it familiar in the retirement and sheltered housing world. 

However the QI Mark is valid for 12 months only. This means that schemes that had received the Mark effortlessly will now have to face the task of completing the full 7 page questionnaire, if they wish to retain the distinctive logo on this website. 

We expect that, at least for a while, the present number of accredited schemes (almost 1,900) will drop significantly. We will very soon remind housing providers to renew their QI Marks, but it is never too early to start.    

In addition to being highlighted on HousingCare.org, accredited schemes can ask for a printed certificate and for a QI Mark logo to use on their own brochures, websites, etc. There is a small charge for this service. For more information contact alex.billeter@eac.org.uk or phone 020 7820 1682.  

The EAC Quality of Information Mark (QI Mark) aims to promote and celebrate all forms of retirement housing, and ensure that older people have access to accurate and detailed information when deciding whether to move home. It is awarded to individual schemes following submission of a fully completed QI Mark questionnaire, and is valid for 12 months.

Schemes awarded the QI Mark are highlighted and fully described on EAC’s popular websites www.HousingCare.org and www.extracarehousing.org.uk and in scheme lists distributed through our Advice Line. They will be promoted similarly through the newly launched FirstStop Care Advice service. The promotion of QI Marked schemes in all these ways is a completely free service by EAC.