Occupational Therapists Are Being Asked to Raise Home Adaptations Sooner: What It Means for You

Occupational therapists are being asked to start talking about your home a lot sooner. The Royal College of Occupational Therapists (RCOT) has released a new practitioner toolkit, published on 8 July 2026, designed to help occupational therapists in every setting raise housing and home adaptations before someone reaches crisis point. For anyone weighing up a stairlift or other home adaptations, it is a shift worth understanding.

What the new toolkit actually asks occupational therapists to do

The toolkit forms part of RCOT’s Building Health into Homes campaign. It was announced through NHS Networks on 8 July 2026 and includes a conversation framework, learning drawn from people with lived experience, and a housing glossary. There is also an operational toolkit aimed at service leaders.

The purpose is straightforward. Occupational therapists working in hospitals, community teams, GP surgeries and social care are being encouraged to ask about the home early, rather than treating housing as something to deal with once a fall, a hospital admission or a delayed discharge has already happened. As RCOT puts it, homes shape what people can do, how safe they feel and how well they can live.

That may sound obvious. In practice, housing has often been the last thing on the list.

The numbers behind the campaign

The toolkit follows RCOT’s Building Health into Homes strategic report, published in June 2026. Its headline findings are stark:

• 3.5 million homes in England are classed as non-decent, affecting 7.5 million people
• 87% of homes fail to meet basic accessibility criteria
• One in five wheelchair user households in Scotland has unmet housing needs
• Poor housing costs the NHS in England an estimated £1.5 billion every year

That 87% figure is the one that speaks loudest to anyone thinking about stairs. The overwhelming majority of British homes were simply never designed with changing mobility in mind. Narrow staircases, upstairs bathrooms and steps to the front door are the norm, not the exception, and most of us only notice once climbing the stairs becomes difficult.

Why acting earlier matters if you are considering a stairlift

RCOT’s central argument is that housing is being addressed too late across the system. When people are discharged to homes that do not meet their needs, their health deteriorates and demand on services grows. The report notes that when occupational therapists are involved early, they help prevent hospital admissions and readmissions, reduce falls and deterioration, and support people to live safely at home.

For families, the practical lesson is much the same. Home adaptations tend to be discussed after something has gone wrong, often while a relative is stuck in a hospital bed waiting for the house to be made safe. Raising it earlier gives you time to consider the options properly, to get an assessment, to explore funding, and to compare suppliers without pressure.

The report also carries the account of Martha Hall, who lives with a physical disability and complex mental health challenges, and who was consulted during its development. She was stuck in hospital for over a year longer than necessary while waiting for suitable accommodation. Things only began to improve once an occupational therapist assessed her needs in full. In her words, accessible housing should be a given rather than a matter of luck.

What RCOT is asking system leaders to change

The report sets out four recommendations for politicians, policymakers and system leaders:

1. Strengthen system leadership across housing, health and care, so housing is consistently treated as a core determinant of health
2. Shift investment towards prevention and early intervention, acting on housing risks before they become crises
3. Build more accessible and adaptable housing, and set baseline accessibility standards for new-build homes so they do not need expensive adaptations later
4. Build workforce capacity, enabling occupational therapy practitioners to work across housing, health and care boundaries

Lauren Walker, Professional Practice Manager at RCOT and the report’s author, summarised the aim as a shift “from reacting to need to preventing it”. The report is intended to apply across all four UK nations.

What this means for you in practice

Policy campaigns take time to filter down, and a toolkit does not by itself shorten a waiting list. But there are a few things worth taking from this.

You do not have to wait to be asked. If you are already finding the stairs harder than you did a year ago, that is a reasonable point to raise it, whether with your GP, your council’s adult social care team or an occupational therapist you are already seeing for something else.

An occupational therapy assessment is free and it opens doors. Local authority occupational therapists assess home adaptation needs, and their recommendation is what underpins a Disabled Facilities Grant application. Smaller items of equipment are often provided free of charge. Our guide to stairlift grants and funding explains how the DFG process works and what the current grant limits are.

Bring the conversation up while it is still hypothetical. The best time to think about a stairlift is before you urgently need one. If you want a sense of what you might be looking at financially, our stairlift prices guide sets out typical UK price ranges reported by industry sources for straight and curved models, rental and reconditioned options.

Assessment and purchase are separate decisions. An occupational therapist assessing your home does not commit you to anything. Many people go on to fund a stairlift privately, some qualify for a grant, and some find that a different adaptation suits them better.

The bigger picture

The uncomfortable truth in RCOT’s figures is that the housing stock is not going to change quickly. Even if every new home built from tomorrow met a higher accessibility standard, the vast majority of people needing help with stairs over the next twenty years will be living in homes built long before anyone thought about it. Adaptation, not new supply, is what will keep most people in their homes.

That makes the prevention argument a practical one rather than an abstract one. A stairlift fitted before a fall costs the same as one fitted after a fall, but the outcome for the person is entirely different.

If you are starting to think about the stairs in your own home, or a parent’s, it is worth beginning with an occupational therapy assessment through your local council, and reading up on what is available. Our stairlift advice and buying guide is a reasonable place to start.

Stairlift Guru is independent and not affiliated with any stairlift manufacturer.