Caring for the future – working with Hafod
The Data Science Campus has begun a research project with Hafod, a social residential tenant organisation, to explore the flows of tenants within social residential accommodation and residential healthcare provisions.
Hafod manages accommodation for 16,000 households across South Wales and is in a unique position as a service provider for both housing and healthcare provisions. It is looking to better understand the interactions of individuals within and between these two functions and other public services such as the NHS.
The research has the potential to help registered social landlords (often known as Housing Associations) provide more meaningful outcomes for their tenants, such as the timely provision of care and adequate accommodation suited to individual need and in a place of preference.
It would also provide valuable and much-needed insight into the movement of tenants within social housing, which could also identify savings to other public services such as the NHS and local authority social services.
We are aiming to design an analytical tool to facilitate evidence-based decision-making within this complex system, and these tools could potentially be adopted by other third-sector organisations to support their operational delivery in the future.
Dr Jamie Smith, Director of Research and Innovation at Hafod, said:
“Armed with information from the project, we’ll be better placed to tailor our services to better meet the needs of different types of customers and understand how those needs will change over time.”
On 25 September 2018, Jamie published a blog on the Hafod website, emphasising the importance of using evidence to meet the needs of different types of customers and understand how those needs will change over time.
We look forward to working with Hafod on this valuable cause and will share more as the project develops.