Healthy@Home Rollout Begins in Liverpool

The programme, Healthy@Home, looks at linking housing and health data to build a clearer picture of residents' circumstances, allow for faster responses, and address health inequalities. The idea is based on using social housing data together with health records to help identify how interventions and support can be best offered. 

More than 220 homes across the Wavertree and Picton areas were included in the project. 

Support that was on offer included property adaptations for residents with respiratory conditions, home modifications to support independent living, and referrals into health and wellbeing services provided by local Integrated Care Teams. The intention being to intervene before problems escalate, rather than respond once they have. 

Housing conditions affect  mental and physical health directly. Cold and damp homes worsen asthma, can cause respiratory infections, raise heart disease risk, and are also linked to higher rates of depression and anxiety. 

We also find that social housing carries a disproportionate share of the health burden, and it falls hardest on vulnerable groups including children, older people, and low-income households who are more likely to live in it. 

Social housing is also increasingly let based on medical or vulnerability need, which means people with existing health conditions and disabilities are prioritised into the sector. As an example of this point, research on UK housing tenure and disability found that 54% of social renters report a disability, compared with 30% of private renters and just 22% of owner-occupiers. This makes the ability to manage proactively the health of residents through the better understanding of the performance of their home, linked to their own health conditions an exciting prospect. 

Integrated Care Systems, established under the Health and Care Act 2022, are encouraged to build place-based partnerships between the NHS, local authorities and housing providers. The Healthy@Home project is a good example of that model in practice at a local level addressing specific health challenges  which can be linked to the immediate and surrounding environmental conditions of the home. 

Mersey Care's Integrated Care Teams, which cover Liverpool and Sefton, already work with GPs and other professionals to support adults managing more than one health or social care need. This involves building a single care plan for everyone rather than treating each condition in isolation. Healthy@Home extends that model into the home itself, using housing performance data to help identify and flag residents who might benefit from the same coordinated support before a health issue becomes urgent. 

Prima Group manages more than 2,700 homes across Liverpool, Sefton and Wirral. The Wavertree and Picton pilot rollout was a direct effort to connect day-to-day housing management with positive health outcomes for residents, rather than treating housing and health support as separate, independent services. 

The Fusion21 Foundation funded the original 2024 pilot as part of its Health and Wellbeing strategic priority, one of its three focus areas alongside Employment and Skills, and Financial Inclusion and Resilience. Since the Foundation was established in 2015, it has distributed more than £3 million in grants and committed a further £2 million in social investment across the housing sector, including separate support for mental health access among homeless young people. 

Speaking of the Healthy@Home project and its impact, Jo Hannan, Head of the Fusion21 Foundation said: 

“We’re delighted to see this innovative project progress  into the pilot rollout. There is a clear link between the condition of people’s homes and their health and wellbeing, and this work shows the value of bringing housing and health insight together in a thoughtful, practical way. As a Foundation, we’re pleased to have helped support the original pilot and to see the learning being used to benefit residents locally. We hope the approach offers useful insight for other housing and health partners exploring similar challenges.” 

The partners see Healthy@Home as the start of a repeatable model for housing-health collaboration that could be applied elsewhere in the UK. As a structural approach, it reflects a wider shift in thinking already under way, one where we treat a resident's home as a legitimate point of contact for health services, not just a place they happen to live in while their health is managed elsewhere. 

For housing providers and health partners the model offers a practical starting point and model to work with: 

·       clearly identify a defined cohort

·       agree what data can be shared and with whom

·       build the referral pathway before scaling participant numbers. 

To find out more you can read the full case study on the Fusion21 website

Fusion21 Foundation supports Healthy@Home rollout for Liverpool social housing residents