Citizens Advice Hampshire Working in partnership with:

Home & Well is a unique collaboration by organisations working together to support residents of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight to return home as quickly and as easily as possible after a hospital stay and, importantly, ensure they have the comfortable home environment that will help them continue to recover rather than relapsing.

The countywide project scheme aims to address the detrimental impact that cold homes, reduced water usage and anxiety due to utility bills can have on people returning home from hospital. By addressing these issues, the partners hope to speed recovery and reduce the need for re-admission.

Specially trained Citizens Advice advisers will review patients’ utility bills to ensure they are on the best possible deals and maximising the benefits that utilities have to offer. The advisers will also help patients apply to be on the Priority Services Register – meaning that they will receive additional support should they experience a power cut or water shortage

The project seeks to achieve the following outcomes:

• Sign up clients to the SSEN Priority Services Register (PSR)
• Sign up clients to the Water Utilities PSR and schemes/tariffs
• Develop relationships with key clinical staff to identify people who are vulnerable to the health problems associated with a cold home
• Provide short financial assessments to help the patient better understand their financial obligations
• Additional fuel poverty, energy advice and water cost advice will be tracked by the referral partner and any other specialist services will be collated statistically.
• For other signposted services these will be statistically recorded.
• Provide ongoing support to the NHS by identifying patients who can benefit from adviser intervention to ensure home setting is warm on discharge

Our view is that the project should combine all the elements of helping clients with fuel/water poverty and identifying PSR cases, whilst also providing a more holistic approach and signposting clients to services helping to tackle additional issues such as housing, employment and relationships. 

Some client feedback demonstrates the support Home and Well provides:

“Client has kidney failure and weakened immune system while her husband has congenital heart defect. Advised on universal credit, benefit entitlement, council tax support, PSR, water tariff, etc. Client thanked the adviser for the extensive advice given as this has given her some reassurance during this difficult time.”