The social housing sector in Scotland reaches over 600,000 households across the country, most of whom live in general needs properties. The sector is uniquely placed to help reduce and/or prevent the number of people requiring formal services, by providing interventions further upstream.  

In 2019, the Scottish Government’s Technology Enabled Care (TEC) programme funded a TEC in Housing (TECH) programme to upscale housing’s contribution to the Digital Health and Care Strategy for Scotland by focusing on service transformation, informed by customer co-design. The programme is hosted by the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA).

The TECH programme followed the TEC Ready project, a housing project funded by the TEC programme (2016-2019), which demonstrated the capacity and potential to engage the housing sector in life-changing, practical applications of TEC within its mainstream services, the TECH programme aimed to scale up housing’s contribution to the Digital Health and Care Strategy for Scotland, with a focus on service transformation, informed by customer co-design. 

The overarching objective of TEC in Housing is to provide the opportunity for households in Scotland to live well and independently, at home, for longer, with digital services that best support their needs. By creating focus throughout the sector and bringing people together from housing, health and social care, the aim is to support housing providers to adopt technology which supports independent living across Scotland and prevents or delays the need for people to access formal care. 

This interim report highlights the progress made over the last two and a half years in terms of raising awareness of the challenges and opportunities that digital technologies present, bridging the gap between housing, health, and care.

Read the full report. 

If you’d like to find out more, please email me at selliot@sfha.co.uk.

• Steph Elliot is Technology Enabled Care in Housing (TECH) Lead at the SFHA