Shared Lives Plus Limited
Registered Charity Number: 1095562
About the charity
Shared Lives Plus is the UK network for Shared Lives and Homeshare, promoting supportive shared living. While Shared Lives and Homeshare are distinct forms of support, they share a number of values and objectives including reducing isolation. Shared Lives schemes arrange accommodation and support for vulnerable adults in the homes of carefully chosen people who give care and support and share their family and community life. Homeshare brings together people with spare rooms with people who are happy to chat and lend a hand around the house in return for affordable, sociable accommodation. Shared Lives Plus members include nearly 6,000 Shared Lives carers, 150 local Shared Lives schemes and 20+ Homeshare organisations, right across the UK.
Project name
Developing Homeshare in Scotland
Project overview
This innovative project will start Homeshare in Scotland, through feasibility and capacity-building development work and ongoing delivery support. The long-term goal is to support the establishment of three Homeshare schemes, across both urban and rural sites. The Homeshare model is based on trust and friendship, allowing people to ‘live well’ within their chosen communities. Homeshare carefully matches someone who needs some help to live independently in their own home (Householder) with someone who has a housing need (Homesharer). In return for low cost accommodation, the Homesharer provides a minimum of 10 hours of support per week to the Householder. This could be practical help like cooking, shopping, cleaning, dogwalking or simply some companionship.
How the £50,000 grant will help
The grant from Ecclesiastical will cover the first year of the project, kick-starting Homeshare in Scotland. It will enable Shared Lives Plus to employ a Homeshare development officer and a development manager, to work with older people, local authorities and the third sector to identify three areas suitable for Homeshare development in Scotland’s diverse communities. Long term, the societal impact of this project will be to support older people to live independently for longer, to provide affordable accommodation for younger people and to help end loneliness.
Quotation
“I didn’t expect to win at all and when we were told, I was delighted! Homeshare will be a new idea in Scotland and it is vital that we raise its profile. Our goal is that we want to bring shared living to more people and create a kinder and stronger society. This grant allows us to create those plans.”
Ben Hall, Shared Lives Plus Limited
