Serving the customer with specialist accommodation for people with disability.

1. © David Green 2018
David.am.green@gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/david-am-green
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2. Who’s heard of Peak Hill. It’s a lovely town between Tomingley and Alectown in Central
West NSW.
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3. If you want a luxury holiday, you might think of Peak Hill.
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4. Peak Hill has everything.
There’s a Chinese and Australian meal bistro,
there’s the rurally named Woolshed café,
there’s even a Friendly Grocer.
And aQracRons. For evenings there’s the FM radio and you can always visit the defunct
gold mine.
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5. And here’s the Holden dealer…closed, as it happens.
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6. But I’ll bet you were thinking of this!
There isn’t one in Peak Hill.
That’s probably where you’d like to stay in New York:
a suite in The LoQe New York Palace Hotel on Madison Ave.
Nice.
You can check it out at: hQps://www.loQenypalace.com/
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7. You’ve just seen the three important market consideraRons at work.
They apply to holidays; they apply to specialist disability accommodaRon.
And, of course the customer drives them all: what the customer wants, where the
customer wants it and what’s the compe..on for the customer’s business.
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8. What suits them!
So, let’s think about the parameters of that in disability accommodaRon.
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9. Let’s talk about group accommodaRon, because there’s plenty of it.
When many people hear “group home” they think “family home”.
Not so.
Why?
Privacy.
SeparaRon opRons.
Support acRviRes.
Workplace.
Planning implicaRons/change of use approval
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10. It can be all rather too clinical: nevertheless, homely is vital: it needs to recognise that
this is different from the family home!
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11. The inRmate privacy of a family home does not work in group sefngs. For both clinical
and social reasons.
Some rule of thumb guides I’ve used with new stock has been:
People go from bedroom to bathroom without being observable from living areas.
One cannot see from one bedroom into another.
Bedrooms are separated for acousRc privacy.
MulRple living spaces are available for a variety of acRviRes by residents.
They are the important ones.
Let’s see how they have played out in some projects I’ve been involved with.
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12. A challenging behaviour unit with three separable units.
It usually operates as a single unit, but people are able to withdraw for privacy or safety,
and opRons for living rooms enables choice of acRvity and companion.
The arrangement allows for necessary clinical supervision: thus the gun-barrel corridor,
and there are doors with electronic locks at the doQed red lines.
Bed 5 operates as a separate unit when required.
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13. Look at how this differs from a family home on the open market.
Social laundry and social kitchen: designed for supported use by the residents.
Using AcRve Support you could easily have four people in the kitchen preparing a meal,
and three in the laundry: one worker and two residents.
They have to be large enough for such usage.
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14. The idea here is semi-self-contained bed-siQer ‘pods’ with private outdoor areas off a
large shared living area.
Note the shared mulR-purpose room and support room. This is available for therapy, as
a sensory room or a quiet retreat.
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15. This home was developed to provide for people whose large residenRal insRtuRon was
closed.
The bedroom dispersion is not as much as I’d like, but as in all real life, compromises
happen.
Important aspects of this layout are the independent unit on the lek: it can operate as
part of the house or not.
There is some spread of the four bedrooms in the main house. This is good; in pracRce,
the privacy is reasonable.
A couple of things I really wanted in this are the “social kitchen” and “social laundry”. In
developer terms this means big laundry and big kitchen. But, you know this by now!
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16. Informed customers are beQer customers.
As part of this effort of pivoRng to the customer I asked my team to produce customer
informaRon: most of it in easy English, and designed for the person with disability to be
the decision maker.
Available on the conference website.
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17. As is always the case in real estate. The three consideraRons are locaRon, locaRon, and
locaRon!
LocaRon consideraRons:
Sufficient demand?
Degree of supply compeRRon.
Local faciliRes and aQracRons.
Delivery approaches: lease, commercial head lease, sale, long term lease, trust, shared
equity…
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18. Important for market decision making by developers are:
InformaRon about SDA plan prevalence in the area.
InformaRon about SDA developments in the pipeline.
Flexibility of your development to swing from SDA to specialist market: holiday lefngs,
for example, general share accommodaRon…
The customer opRons here cut in a number of direcRons.
The first is who is your customer for any parRcular service.? Disability is a nuanced
service with customer variables incredibly important for the success of a relaRonship.
In the formal system I ran, we called this ‘matching’. A vacancy in group accommodaRon
is not just a vacancy as in a hotel, it is a vacancy in terms of parRcular characterisRcs. No
match and the whole outlet can be destroyed. SomeRmes literally.
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19. Disability accommodaRon is not a family home.
Unless, of course, it is a family home.
Either way, a good offering starts with understanding the customer and what they seek!
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