Sheila Mackintosh is a Housing Consultant and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the West of England. Sheila has many years of experience in helping to improve the delivery of housing services for older and disabled people. She was part of the team that carried out the 2018 review of the Disabled Facilities Grant in England. She also contributed to the 2017 Equality and Human Rights Commission work on the ‘Hidden Housing Crisis’ and reviewed the evidence about the role of adaptations in improving later life for the Centre for Ageing Better.
As a consultant she has worked with numerous local authorities to integrate teams across housing and social care, and to develop new home adaptation partnerships with housing associations. More recently she has been commissioned to look at ways of reducing occupational therapy waiting lists, monitor new initiatives to speed hospital discharge, and evaluate a preventative service to reduce falls. Current work is a follow up to the DFG Review looking at the delivery of adaptations in the housing association sector. With a team from Foundations, she is also developing a Design Guide. This online resource will provide information, examples, photos and layout ideas, underpinned with clinical reasoning, to help Occupational Therapists, DFG Teams and landlords improve the design of home adaptations.