Supporting Residents with Additional Needs to Thrive - Housing Policy

Overview

Have your say on Hackney’s "Supporting Residents with Additional Needs to Thrive - Housing Policy"

Summary

Hackney Housing Services have developed the Supporting residents with additional needs to thrive Housing Policy. Our goal is to ensure residents with additional needs receive quality support to sustain their tenancies and access services fairly. We created this policy by listening to council tenants with a range of additional needs, and learning from their experiences to understand how we can better support them. This policy will allow us to train staff, improve data collection, and build strong partnerships to meet these identified needs. Our approach is trauma-informed, resident-centric, preventative, and responsive, focusing on equality, safety, and collaboration. This policy applies to Hackney Council tenants and aims to make reasonable adjustments based on residents' unique circumstances to prevent disadvantages. We are now seeking further feedback on this draft policy to ensure it aligns with the views and needs previously shared by our residents.

This survey will take approximately 15 minutes to complete.

Who has created this policy?

Hackney Housing Services has created this policy in collaboration with our partners in social care, health and Benefits & Homelessness Prevention. We created this policy by listening to the experiences of council tenants who have a range of additional needs and learning from them about how we need to improve from their perspective. 

Why do we need this policy?

Residents with a range of additional needs and their advocates have told us - via complaints and member’s enquiries, through our usual casework, through satisfaction surveys and as part of research we have carried out to create this policy - that we are missing opportunities to recognise, respond to and record when residents have additional needs and need reasonable adjustments. This means they are at risk of worse outcomes when accessing services from Housing. 

The Housing Ombudsman has also highlighted a need for a policy of this type in this report Spotlight on Attitudes, Respect and Rights - a Relationship of Equals. This draws on national datasets from Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Office of National Statistics and the NHS as well as the Ombudsman’s own housing casework and primary research that included: 

• 1,275 residents 
• 171 social landlords 
• 217 advocacy services, including Citizens’ Advice

Who is this policy for?

This policy covers Hackney Housing Services involved in the running of council owned properties. The policy applies to London Borough of Hackney Council tenants, members of their household, Hackney leaseholders or their sub-tenants. Certain reasonable adjustments may be tenure-dependent and where the policy applies specifically to tenants, this will be the term used. This policy does not apply to homeless households in temporary accommodation owned and managed by other landlords, residents living in housing association homes or in the private sector. 

What do we mean by 'additional needs'?

For the purposes of this policy, we define residents with additional needs as ‘residents who, due to their personal characteristics, circumstances or life experiences may either be currently or permanently less likely or able to achieve: 

• equal access to housing services 
• equal outcomes when accessing our services.

What is our aim?

Our aim is to ensure that residents with additional needs: 

• Receive good quality help and support to sustain their tenancy and maintain their home and wellbeing
• Are able to access Housing Services fairly and do not experience worse outcomes when using services than residents who do not have additional needs. 

How will this policy affect me?

The policy sets out how Housing Services will identify and respond to residents who have additional needs. This includes basics - for example around ensuring translations are available to those who need them - through to more specific adjustments that apply in certain service areas such as antisocial behaviour, gas safety, repairs and rent arrears.

How will we achieve this?

• Train and support our staff to Recognise, Record and Respond to residents with additional needs effectively 
• Build strong and effective partnerships with other professionals and services supporting residents with additional needs 
• Develop systems and processes to improve the data and insight we collect from and about residents with additional needs
• Use this data and insight to: 
  • Provide reasonable adjustments to individual residents in a consistent way 
  • Monitor access to services and outcomes achieved to ensure that specific groups do not experience disadvantage 
  • Redesign services and improve partnerships with other services, where needed, to better meet the needs of identified groups with additional needs 

Our new policy is based on the following principles:

• To be trauma-informed and to recognise that disadvantage and deprivation contribute to resident vulnerability and unequal housing outcomes 
• To be resident-centric. Actively listening to what residents tell us and putting ourselves in their shoes. Noticing what is going on for them, even if it isn’t the thing we initially contacted them about. Helping them navigate different parts of the ‘system’ where more than one team or service is involved, not ‘passing the buck’. 
• To take a preventative approach. Where it appears that a resident needs additional support, we will offer help at the earliest opportunity 
• To avoid making assumptions about someone’s vulnerability or resilience. We will listen carefully and seek to understand any issues holistically 
• To be responsive, deliver good customer service at all times and where appropriate, tailor our responses to meet the needs of residents with additional needs. 
• To be strength-based, supporting people to take ownership, be resilient and resolve their own problems where possible and appropriate.  
• To be honest and transparent about what is and is not possible in terms of services, enforcement and outcomes. Where possible, to provide options and be clear about consequences rather than telling people what to do.
• To recognise where a resident’s circumstances are contributing to their challenges and avoid blaming them. 
• To take a restorative approach to building, maintaining and repairing relationships 
• To promote partnership working and seek the expertise and support of other services as appropriate 
• To promote equalities and challenge discrimination and disadvantage at all times 
• To be safety-focussed and aware of risks 
• To involve residents and communities in the future development of our services

Example - Ted:

Ted (not his real name) has a severe anxiety disorder which has resulted in him receiving emergency hospital admissions on a number of occasions. He was left with no heating and hot water for an extended period because we couldn’t get access to his home to replace his broken boiler. Ted told us that the contractor who attended made him feel very stressed, anxious and unsafe. Ted felt the contractor didn’t explain what he was doing, invaded his space and made him ‘feel like I didn’t matter’. When Ted complained about this, he felt his questions were dismissed, some key facts were reported wrong or not addressed and a written response to his complaint was delayed, which compounded how Ted felt. 

We sorted this situation by working with Ted’s advocate from a charity to be present when the work was undertaken, making him feel safer, providing a full schedule of work so Ted knew what to expect and allocating Ted a worker from our Resident Sustainment Team, who managed the negotiations between Ted and the contractor. 

Ted was insightful about how his anxiety had been triggered and what we could have done differently to prevent things from escalating as they did. These simple adjustments could have prevented the situation from happening in the first place.

What happens now?

We want to find out if people who live in Hackney’s council-managed homes support this policy, and to ask for their suggestions about how it can be turned into action. We are also seeking the views of professionals and organisations working with people who have additional needs so we can build stronger partnerships and support our residents better. 

How to get involved

The consultation will run from Monday 22 July 2024 to Monday 2 September 2024. Please complete the survey below to share your views. 

If you require this document in a different format, please email get.involved@hackney.gov.uk. We will consider your request and get back to you in the next five working days.

What happens when the consultation closes?

The consultation feedback will be used to produce a final policy, which if approved by Cabinet in November 2024, will then be published. An action plan - where we set out specific actions and how we will measure our progress - is being developed and will be published alongside this.