Social landlords are no longer just looking after the bricks and mortar of their properties. Now they have to take into account all of a prospective tenant’s needs - and that increasingly includes care.

Since the introduction of the Supporting People regime, the National Service Framework for mental health, measures to tackle bed-blocking, the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 and the emphasis on "joined-up" working, there has been a blurring of the social care and social housing sectors. It has not been a smooth transition, but social landlords are now looking outside the bricks and mortar box.

"Sheltered housing in one form or another has been an expanding service for many years," says Local Government Association senior policy manager Simon Weeks. "It’s about looking at alternative service models other than simply offering residential care or nursing homes for people who need a high level of support."

He points to the recent government initiative to combat bed-blocking and commitments in the last comprehensive spending review to boost supported housing. The targets set in public service agreements and planning guidance after the review have given the sector something to aim for and the means to achieve it, he says.

This has led to more co-operation between social services and housing departments. "It’s absolutely essential," Weeks says. "Authorities have to work on a three-year rolling programme and there are issues of planning permission and getting the homes built. What often happens is the social care people will be working on a needs analysis of how many people are coming through the system that will need supported housing and feeding that into the housing plans."

Such collaboration will often provide information that planners may not necessarily be privy to, such as people with learning difficulties who are nearly 18 and will need a home.

As councils move away from providing traditional care homes due to a lack of resources to meet higher standards, housing associations and councils are working in partnership. Access to Housing Corporation cash has become a driver in this.

Diane Henderson, National Housing Federation head of care support, says: "Housing has been picked up as an important element in health and care and we are starting to see ourselves as the third partner in that partnership.

"Whether that is approaching long-term accommodation for people with health and care needs, intermediate non-hospital short-term accommodation or helping someone move back into their own home."

But bringing together two disciplines that have in the past been quite distant has its problems. The differing argots of social care and social housing can be difficult to overcome.

"We have all got our different jargons and that can sometimes be a barrier," Henderson says. "But we are starting to interpret each other."

Sam Lister, Chartered Institute of Housing policy officer, says the barrage of initiatives and funding streams can be a bother. Supporting People - which is intended to cover support only and not care - is a case in point. As the regime prepared to go live last year, the message boards of housing websites reverberated with pleas for advice from people who could not understand how the government differentiated between the two.

And it goes further than that. Lister says: "There are schemes where people need support for independent living but also need care so it is inevitable that a proportion of the Supporting People money goes into joint-funded schemes. The challenge is to put policy into practice."

But the nature of joint funding and the sheer variety of initiatives are a further challenge. "There is a slight case of initiative-itis," Henderson says. "There’s a strategy or a plan or a framework for everything." She points to recent Social Exclusion Unit guidance for dealing with people with mental health problems, which will have to combine with Department of Health initiatives and "various other government-funded bodies".

Weeks points to another perennial problem in meeting the government’s social care objectives - finding the staff. "A lot of parts of the country have recruitment and retention problems for care staff and home care staff," he says. "And it’s largely home care staff who are needed in these supported housing schemes."

The developing relationship between social housing and social care reflects a growing awareness among landlords that they have a wider role to play than managing their stock. This awareness has been prompted not just by the government’s care agenda, but it is central to the urban regeneration agenda too.

"We are looking at being neighbourhood players, not just bricks and mortar," Henderson says. "To do that we need to be wise as to who else is in the area, who else provides services and what the local priorities are."

Case study 1

The Children (Leaving Care) Act of 2000 placed a new responsibility on local authorities to ensure care leavers have enough support for the transition into adulthood.

The London Borough of Redbridge’s work in this field - cited in a good practice handbook co-authored by David Woods, development manager of homelessness charity Centrepoint - has won approval as a care-leaving strategy. Schemes such as its Bathurst Road residential unit offer two levels of move-on accommodation for care leavers. Support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the ground floor, with self-contained flats on the top floor for those able to support themselves. The scheme was initiated by the housing department after learning from social services that care leavers experienced difficulties finding adequate housing.

All care leavers are assessed and housed as closely according to their needs as resources allow, chief children and families officer Patrick Power says. The council keeps in touch in case problems emerge. Recently Power has had to help a care leaver at university who wants to return to his foster home at the end of term.

"It’s all about putting the young person’s needs first wherever we can," he says.

Case study 2

The Anchor Trust housing association’s integrated care and housing schemes for older people are seen by many as a potential solution to the NHS bed-blocking crisis.

The schemes offer a combination of sheltered housing with a dedicated care team and independent living.

Barbara Laing director of trust subsidiary Anchor Homes, says: "There is real potential for supporting hospital discharges and tackling bed-blocking.

"We could provide for a person when they come out of hospital while their home is being made ready for them, having bathroom adaptations and handrails fitted. That would free up a hospital bed."

The schemes - the latest being in a converted animal feed mill in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire - are all run in partnership with local authorities and part-funded by grants from the Housing Corporation.

Although the trust - its chief executive John Belcher sat on a government bed-blocking task force - does have a small intermediate care unit for hospital leavers in Westminster, Laing believes integrated housing and care is the way forward.

"It has a huge contribution to make," she says.

"But it’s still at the stage of trying to get people to make it real."

Case study 3

After noting a high rate of tenancy failures among under-25s, Cardiff Council housing officer Alan Setterfield linked with the authority’s Supporting People-funded tenant support team to combat the problem.

Setterfield wrote a leaflet based on the issues that he and the rest of the housing team had identified as causing problems for younger tenants. It includes information on holding down a tenancy and basic life skills such as how to arrange gas and electricity connections.

The leaflet’s aims straddle care and housing: to prevent young first-time tenants losing their homes, reduce the number of abandoned council homes and help to stabilise communities that can become blighted by large numbers of boarded-up properties.

Housing officers give the leaflet to all new council tenants under 25 when they collect their keys. Support workers and child care social workers also use the leaflets which are available in the city’s housing advice centre.

"Since we started using the leaflet the number of tenancy failures for people under the age of 25 has halved," a council spokesperson said.