Housing adaptation planning  - Implementing research-based methodology in community praxis

The aim of the project was to demonstrate and implement scientific methods for the assessment and analysis of the physical environment in connection with housing adaptations in municipal activity. All the occupational therapists in Kristianstad municipality were trained to carry out data collection and analysis with the Housing Enabler instrument. Housing adaptation cases were successively registered in a common database in order to provide material on which to base decisions as part of the municipal housing provision for people with functional disabilities. The project also aimed to improve the quality of occupational therapists' handling of housing adaptation cases. Dissemination of information inside and outside the municipality has been an important component, for example, to the public works department, to builders, property owners and pensioners' organizations. The project has generated important knowledge about possibilities and challenges in processes intended to translate research methods into practical activity. The challenges concerned, for example, the use of IT, attitudes to R&D and the translation of collected data into information of practical use for planning. In order to penetrate the problem further, focus group interviews were also held with the occupational therapists. Politicians and officials in the municipal care department are very satisfied with the project and its results, and it has been decided that the method will continue to be used after the end of the project. The project closed at the end of 2005 and the results were presented at a well-attended conference in Kristianstad in January 2006. Data processing and scientific publication will continue in 2006. The results are expected to stimulate the development of cooperation between researchers and practitioners, which in the long term should be able to have a positive effect on quality in municipal health care and matters such as housing provision.

Final report [in Swedish] available for download: Min Bostad och Jag (2007-12-05).