'Transforming Services, Transforming Lives' - the HIA Annual Conference 2009 - took place on 30 September and 1 October at the Holiday Inn in Stratford upon Avon.

This year's conference explored the potential for housing intervention services to take a lead role in delivering government strategies, local priorities, and high quality services that promote choice and independence.

Shehla Husain, Deputy Director of Housing Care and Support at Communities and Local Government (CLG), opened the 2009 HIA Annual Conference with an update on progress made against the national strategy for housing in an ageing society - 'Lifetime Homes, Lifetime Neighbourhoods'. Shehla placed an emphasis on generating evidence to demonstrate the value of home improvement agency and handyperson services through the HIA Outcomes Framework, and the handyperson benefits realisation tool that CLG are developing to sustain services in an environment of increasing budgetary pressures. Shehla's presentation, along with all the other conference presentations, can be downloaded from the conference page of our website.

One of the most popular speakers at this year's conference was Dame Joan Bakewell, the government appointed Voice for Older People. Dame Joan, who is in her 70s herself, spoke to the delegates about what it's like to be an older person and what older people want. She emphasised the importance of face to face solutions, and of giving people all the options so they can make their own decision. For a more in-depth look at Joan Bakewell's talk, please read the article on the news page of our website or download the key points from the conference page.

A number of the breakout sessions were particularly well received by delegates, not least the ‘Dragons' Den' workshop, in which Mark Amor, Manager of Ridgeway Care and Repair pitched his Handyperson Service to two commissioners and a business entrepreneur.

In the breakout session ‘The PCT Perspective' Anne McDowall - Manager, Blackpool Care & Repair, and Judith Mills - Senior Public Health Specialist, Blackpool Primary Care Trust discussed how housing intervention servives can work with the local health service to deliver positive outcomes for clients. The presenters put forward the case that with increasing budgetary pressures, NHS commissioners will be looking to form strategic alliances with agencies which can help maximise their budgets. The speakers stated that home improvement agencies should become familiar with their local joint commissioning framework and aim to become represented within it. They also argued that it is essential that home improvement agencies become part of the local Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) process as this will facilitate opportunities to develop working relationships with health, and will embed home improvement agencies into the monitoring and reporting mechanisms that gather evidence for commissioning. If you are interested in finding out more, please read Judith Mills' article on what NHS commissioners want from home improvement agencies.

The new HIA Quality Mark was another popular breakout session during which speakers from Foundations provided delegates with information about the content of the new Quality Mark and how it will drive improvement for the sector. The session also included presentations from agency managers who had undertaken the new HIA Quality Mark assessment and they provided delegates with feedback on their experiences.

The 'Raising the profile of your HIA' breakout session was also popular with delegates, delivered by Foundations' PR consultant Rowan Atkins with Lesa Kingham and Tracey Rilett from Care and Repair Black Country Housing Group. Lesa, Rowan and Tracey argued that communications should be part of every home improvement agency's core business activities, and discussed the tactics that agencies might want to include in their communications strategies to reach their target audiences - clients and commissioners. Drawing on the experiences of Care and Repair Black Country Housing Group, the session focued on how agencies can use PR, marketing, events, networks and partnerships and more to promote themselves and gain recognition and funding. Delegates then worked in groups to sketch out their own communications strategies for a variety of scenarios. The new communications toolkit for home improvement agencies contains some of the ideas that were suggested during this session.

This year's Question Time session was chaired by Dame Joan Bakewell and the panel included Stephanie Brann, Steve Malone, Amy Swan (National Housing Federation) and Katie Aston (Home Office). Topics raised by delegates for discussion included how preventive services will survive the recession, the recent changes to the Supporting People programme, the impact of the personalisation agenda on the sector and a potential change in government.

Sue Adams delivered a rousing address during the final plenary session on day two of the conference, setting out the difficulties in promoting adaptations as a political debate and some of the solutions for getting the subject higher up the political agenda.

As is tradition, there was fun, networking and dancing at the evening dinner and disco, with the Treasure Hunt prizes - donated by the conference exhibitors - given out to the lucky winners.

If you would like to comment on this article, please send an email to Laura Ripper.