Social care doesn't get much more person-centred than this: in Oxfordshire, P and Veebs live together. They're not related. P is an older person who wants some help around the house and some company. Veebs is a younger person who needs to save on the rent. It's called homeshare.

In a YouTube video P and Veebs describe their experiences of living together. It's certainly worth a watch because it really sums up what homeshare is all about: a co-productive arrangement where both people benefit and no one is seen as merely a service user. Perhaps one way to describe it is as an innovative way of contributing to tackling the scourge of loneliness.

Over the last couple of years, we at the Social Care Institute for Excellence have been managing the independent evaluation of a Homeshare Partnership Programme. Traverse, our evaluators, have looked at how homeshare works best and also some of the barriers faced when looking at making it sustainable and creating more schemes.

People's wellbeing and ability to remain independent is increasingly important in today's approach to social care, as is providing co-designed person-centred support that enables people to do this. Our evaluation shows that Homeshare has the potential to contribute to this important wider agenda –as it did for P and Veebs.

Benefits for householders

• Improvement in wellbeing (specifically in mental health)
• Increased companionship which reduced loneliness and isolation
• Practical help with household tasks which enabled them to maintain their independence at home.

Benefits for homesharers

• Cheaper rent
• Companionship
• Realising the value of intergenerational learning and sharing skills, for instance, in cooking together or in using information technology.

In the film, P admits that it was difficult at first to get her head around Veebs living with her, but for her, the benefits far outweigh the negatives. Our evaluation was able to explore and describe the vital importance of person-centred one to one relationships facilitated and managed by local homeshare schemes, so that any risks can be identified and addressed and challenges over things like over personal space can be effectively and quickly recognised and addressed. 

Passionate local people

Also important are the big local and strategic issues. For instance, our evaluation emphasises that schemes should have clear plans which demonstrate how their approaches can be adapted to changes in housing and social care policy over time. Importantly, in developing a sustainable scheme, evidence shows that local government needs to be on board so that homeshare has the best possible chance of success. As with many local programmes, developing safe, successful personal, relationships that benefit both parties rely on the efforts and of passionate local people and organisations who work together to make it happen.

I think our evaluation makes an important contribution to the body of evidence on what works, in developing a sustainable and locally adaptive model of homeshare, which our evidence suggests has the potential to make a contribution across the wider landscape of care-related policies and provision. For instance, in areas such as reducing loneliness, supporting carers, intergenerational community development, reducing demand on traditional services, person-centred care, co-production, asset-based community development, resilience and challenges related to housing.

I'll stop there and let another beneficiary of homeshare, Clare, sum it up; Clare is P's daughter and she talks about how, these days, she can enjoy quality leisure time with her mother, rather than simply having to do lots of chores for her. It's like she's got her time with her daughter back. I think that, given our evidence so far, the  potential benefits offered by homeshare justify taking on the challenges of setting up a sustainable homeshare scheme.

David Teeman is senior research analyst and evaluation manager at the Social Care Institute for Excellence

P and Veebs are homesharers through Age UK Oxfordshire, one of the pilot schemes funded by Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales and the Big Lottery Fund through The Homeshare Partnership programme. To find out more, visit: www.homeshareuk.org@homeshareuk