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www.lofty-heights.org [email protected] Tel: 01473 345301
Happy New Year!
We are hitting the ground running this year! We are busier than we have ever been. In this issue I want to
take the time to explain exactly why we are so very busy. It starts with a dedicated staff team and our
commitment to investing in staff training and development.
We know that we offer a great service, we do a very difficult job and we do it sensitively and compassionately
in some difficult circumstances. However, if it wasn’t for you; our clients, support workers, social workers,
housing providers, area co-ordinators, and good partnership working, we wouldn’t be able to help nearly as
many people as we do.
So thank you. All of you, for your support, your service commission and for your belief in us.
Lofty Heights has two clear aims; to improve people’s quality of life in their
own homes whilst providing jobs and training for local young people.
Newsletter 15
January 2018
Aiming Higher for
The People of
Suffolk
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www.lofty-heights.org [email protected] Tel: 01473 345301
Percy Update
We began our campaign to raise money to buy a replacement van last autumn as
our existing van has had frequent garage visits in 2016/17, and is on its ‘last legs’.
We approached councillors asking if they might consider helping us with a
contribution from their locality budgets. We are pleased to report that we are very
close to reaching our goal of £13,000. We would like to say a huge thank you to
the councillors who have already pledged amounts between £500 and £1500,
these include Cllrs Chambers, Savage, Bird, Gage, Quinton, Gardiner, and the
Stowmarket 7 (Conservative and Independent). Our fingers are crossed waiting to
hear the outcome of appeals to Ipswich Borough Council’s Community Fund. If
you haven’t yet made a contribution and would like to do so - please get in touch to join the Percy party.
We hope to have some exciting news for you in our next newsletter.
High Impact
This issue is going to look at our impact. We are delighted to be part of SE UK/SEEE and involved in Co-
Producing Social Impact Management Tools. A great deal of our impact is in areas that are very hard to
measure. They involve self-esteem, trust, grief, family conflict, self-image and feelings of worthiness. There
are tools out there to measure these intangibles, but they still don’t convey the difference that we make. So
here is what we do:
Tenancy Compliance
If a person has difficulty taking care of themselves then all other aspects of their life are at risk. One of those
factors is their tenancy. With the ongoing reduction of social housing stock, it stands to reason that people
being housed are the ones with the most complex needs.
Our impact includes reducing evictions. Reducing evictions is not
just about saving one person from becoming homeless, requiring
emergency housing (possibly supported housing) and other local
resources. Reducing evictions means that we reduce the costs to
social and private landlords, we reduce the cost of legal action,
housing officer/letting agent time, court fees, and empty property
costs.
On a more personal level, for the tenant involved this means a
direct reduction of anxiety. This has an immediate effect on
reducing their physical and mental health related problems. In
almost every case the customers’ highest level of anxiety is prior
to Lofty Heights’ arrival. The idea of the work is much more
oppressive than the work itself. In fact, nearly every case has
reported back that they wished that they had called us in sooner.
We are working on our data collection for the different categories of work we do, but we are confident that
we have helped prevent around a dozen evictions in 2017.
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www.lofty-heights.org [email protected] Tel: 01473 345301
Care Implementation
From clearing space to create room for hospital beds and equipment,
declutters and deep cleans to enable regular cleaning to be put in place,
our work is getting people out of hospital and respite care, back home.
This reunites families, reduces stress and anxiety for the individual and
greatly reduces costs for the NHS and Social Services. This also reduces the
costs of care home/residential care fees that may be borne by the
individual or the state and frees up hospital beds.
Infection Control
When we get older or suffer from a long-term debilitating condition it can
mean that we have difficulty cleaning as thoroughly as we used to. Just the
effect of fading eyesight hampers this task, let alone joint or muscular
problems. We have carried out several jobs this year to help people to get
on top of this problem. People who have been back and forth to doctors
and hospitals due to recurrent infections have had support from us to tackle
this problem. Our deep clean can prevent a ‘medical revolving door’. In
short – this can save lives. It also saves the NHS a lot of money on repeat
prescription/treatment without considering the ongoing misery of repeated
infections for the person involved.
We worked with a case recently that had originally been referred to us in February 17, closed and then re-
opened in April 17. It was closed again due to customer non-compliance and re-opened in late October 17.
Funding was approved in November and we finished work in the middle of December 17. It was one of the
worst cases of self-neglect that we had witnessed and, sadly, the gentleman died shortly afterwards. Who
knows how things might have turned out if we had been able to carry out that work sooner.
Housing: Repairs and Maintenance Access
It is daunting to know that you must clear a room (s) to have work done.
Imagine if you have a physical condition that makes simply walking agony.
Moving boxes or furniture is an impossible task.
This year we have worked with many people who were accepting eviction
in preference to allowing improvement work to happen. It is not unusual
to arrive to find people contemplating homelessness or talking about
suicide to prevent works from going ahead.
It can cost several thousand pounds for a landlord to evict a secure tenant
from their home, especially for breach of tenancy conditions as in these circumstances.
In one case, that had been at stalemate for two years, we were brought in, carried out the declutter, pack up
and returned to unpack after the new heating system being installed. We resolved all this within eight weeks.
In another, we unpacked a whole house that had been stacked with boxes for over 10 years. This took a
week plus a skip.
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www.lofty-heights.org [email protected] Tel: 01473 345301
I am delighted to include this from one our most recent customers:
“I am a single, female 77 y.o. made especially fragile by a very bad fall in 2016 necessitating a hip operation
which makes walking and standing often very difficult for me.
My housing officer introduced me to Lofty Heights.
This is an ethical company. It also gives young people jobs too and trains
them. I was introduced to the Founder of the company, Mrs Olive Quinton and
saw she looked honest and full of probity and was very calming. The Council
had decreed that most of my furniture and all of my 1000s of books should be
moved into storage. By this time, you can imagine I was a hysterical gibbering
wreck. I had also contracted bronchitis which lasted for four weeks.
IN CONCLUSION
Mrs Quinton and her wonderful team lifted 'Stuff' - Heavy stuff - willingly and smilingly, with me still very far
from well and really traumatised, and with cheery calm and kindness achieved sending loads of clothes and
books etc to charities. She also gave me the courage to let go of some of my mother's memorabilia.
What LOFTY HEIGHTS means to me is that I am convinced they saved my sanity and possibly my Life in this
dreadful time of Stress. Without them I could not have achieved any of this cathartic clearing out since I have
become so frail. They even got everything back in time for Christmas, and even my Christmas trimmings to
put up in time!
There should be more companies like them. I would recommend them anywhere.”
It is not only the customer that benefits from our work. We enable housing
providers, social work teams, mental-health team and discharge units to
improve their KPIs, not to mention increasing their positive customer/tenant
feedback statistics!
This from a housing officer:
<Our> “Tenant was certain that they did not want any of the repair work
carried out that we are obliged to complete. They were convinced that it
was unnecessary work, and they were going to refuse to move any of their
belongings in order for us to carry out the heating replacement.
After speaking with you and arranging the first joint visit, the change in attitude has been immense. Working
with you has definitely shown a character change in <our tenant>, and it has helped Mid Suffolk District
Council to overcome a regular problem that landlords face with their tenants. When maintenance is
necessary, but it impedes on people’s lives, tenants don’t want to change and this causes multiple tenancy
related issues.”
Customer Thank You
Customer Thank You
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www.lofty-heights.org [email protected] Tel: 01473 345301
Waste Removal
We are not a waste removal company. Although, we do hold a waste
carriers licence. We have years of experience of clearing every type of
waste from homes but we face punitive charges because we are not a
charity. When we take any item from a property it immediately
becomes ‘trade waste’. SCC only allows us to dispose of recycling for
free at the tip. One borough council even adds VAT to our bulky waste
collections if we make the arrangements!
These challenges make us incredibly resourceful. We probably have the
most complete overview of waste disposal options throughout Suffolk.
We can advise you of the cheapest, most efficient way to clear waste.
You can: buy approved council waste bags – when there is a very small amount of waste, hire 1100ltr bins,
hire skips, and access the local council’s bulky waste, hazardous and clinical waste collection services. Prices
vary considerably from area to area.
This subject causes us the most frustration. Often the only thing keeping a person in hospital is the need to
replace their own bed with a hospital one. That person could dispose of that bed for free at the tip – how
likely is it that someone using our service can take a bed to the tip themselves?
When we talk about punitive waste charges we are not talking about us being penalised but vulnerable
members of Suffolk’s communities and the taxpayer. We have to recharge that cost to the patient recovering
from illness who is blocking a bed. The NHS and social services are being penalised by not being able to
discharge that person, costing services millions of pounds each year. And you are bearing the burden of those
costs because you pay towards the NHS and social services through your income and council tax.
So, when we raise this subject we are not looking to reduce our costs. We are questioning the system that
punishes every person in this country and not just our county.
Our Teams
So, I have told you what we do and how we do it. I haven’t
even told you about the teams of young people we have hired,
helped, supported, trained and given real paid work to. We put
20 through educational training at Otley College, 12 received
real work experience and 7 gained paid employment.
They are good people. They came to us with a mix of poor (or
no) qualifications, overlooked by employers. Our current team
are solid working men with between 3 and 5 years’ experience
of working with people with very complex needs doing a very difficult job.
I say teams because we are just about to take on our next team. We will be training them, teaching them,
giving them real work experience and preparing them fully for employment. We will be saving the country the
money it would be paying in benefits and instead, generating tax income.
We make a difference to everybody’s life, improving the future life chances of our vulnerable customers and
the young people we provide training and employment opportunities to. How’s that for impact?
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www.lofty-heights.org [email protected] Tel: 01473 345301
Our Declutter Service
For our first newsletter of the year, I am looking back to some of the very
complex cases we had in late 2017 where the impact on the customer was
significant.
We work with people who often can’t see a way out of their situation, who
feel that no-one can help and that there is no point in trying to make
changes. This can be due to mental health problems, physical health issues,
life circumstances that promote chaos- such as alcoholism and drug abuse.
The living environments that these people find themselves in have often deteriorated to the extent
that other people would find shocking and uninhabitable. The examples I am focusing on include
homes lacking heating or hot water, pest infestations (rats, mice, fleas, flies etc being present in the
house), rotting food, human and animal faeces being present within the property and a level of
clutter, uncleanliness and disorder that means rooms are not able to be used for any purpose.
These types of jobs usually come to our attention due to the customer being at risk of eviction, or
because of a mental health episode or health crisis that brings the customer to the attention of
health or social care services. The customer can feel pressured and defensive, as timescales are
often imposed and expectations on what must be done can feel overwhelming. Our role is complex
and needs to balance the requirements of the referring service with the needs of the customer.
Within the last few months we have removed an entire
skip’s worth of beer cans from a person’s living room,
cleared and cleaned a kitchen that was overflowing with
rotting food, flies and maggots, cleared an elderly person’s
home of 15 recycling bins full of newspapers and
magazines, removed the remains of rats and their nests
from a person’s home environment and supported
numerous people who were unable to have home care
services, hospital equipment or district nursing services
without their home first being decluttered and cleaned.
Each person or family we help with our decluttering and
cleaning work has the opportunity for a fresh start. Customers are no longer faced with mess,
muddle and chaos, but have space to move and breathe. We feel privileged that we can be part of
the process of change for our customers. We help break the cycle of disorder and enable people to
receive the support they need to make a fresh start.
For more information please look at our website, talk to us, or even make an appointment:
Email: [email protected] or Telephone: 01473 345301.
