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CHAPTER FIVE - HOUSING ADVICE IN HOMELESSNESS PREVENTION

The role of housing advice work in homelessness prevention

5.1 Housing advice can play a crucial role both in terms of helping tenants retain existing accommodation and in helping potentially homeless households find new tenancies. The new emphasis on homelessness prevention has boosted the status of housing advice activities and the staff responsible.

5.2 However, the scope of housing advice work extends beyond homelessness prevention. Many people seeking and/or receiving housing advice cannot accurately be defined as 'people at immediate risk of homelessness'. This makes it difficult for LAs to quantify the resources involved in housing advice work specifically related to homelessness prevention. Similar issues arise where prevention-oriented housing advice is provided mainly by homelessness casework staff. Here, there is rarely any clarity on the proportion of officer time absorbed by advice as opposed to assessment activities.

5.3 Even when a housing adviser is dealing with a person facing the loss of accommodation it is often difficult to be certain (a) that help provided is critical in enabling the service user to find accommodation, and (b) whether homelessness would otherwise have resulted. This complicates any attempt to measure the impact of advice work on homelessness prevention.

Organisation of housing advice services and networks

5.4 Housing advice contributing to homelessness prevention is delivered in a number of ways. The most significant are through (a) generic housing advice officers or teams (whether operated by LAs or by voluntary agencies), and (b) LA homelessness caseworkers.

5.5 Approaches to the organisation of prevention-oriented housing advice differed across the case study LAs. Edinburgh, for example, presents itself as operating an 'advice-led' homelessness service. Housing advice services, some of which are directly relevant to homelessness prevention, are provided by a wide range of staff based across the authority. Perhaps most important are those located in the council's Housing Options Team and whose primary role is homelessness assessment. Additional provision is made through area housing teams which include specialist advice officers located alongside housing management staff.

5.6 As well as looking at how housing advice is delivered, the research also looked at who was responsible for the provision of services. In the majority of LAs, advice provision was integrated into the duties of homelessness casework staff, although this was often complemented by generic advice activity taking place elsewhere. In some cases this involved other staff in the Council (housing, social work and health) as well as external agencies. Midlothian Council was the only authority that saw homelessness caseworkers as the sole source of housing advice in the locality (Table 5.1). Significantly, in all but six of the 32 LAs voluntary agencies were reported as playing a significant role alongside council staff (see below).

5.7 Housing management staff were also described as playing a significant role in the provision of housing advice, primarily in providing information and signposting people to other agencies.

Table 5.1 - The delivery of housing advice services

Source: Telephone Survey, 2006

5.8 Some LAs were concerned about the consistency of housing advice being delivered across local areas. The authorities where this was an issue - Highland, North Lanarkshire and Orkney - all contained dispersed and/or rural communities. Another rural council, Argyll & Bute, had developed a freephone housing advice service. The service, commissioned from an external agency, was introduced in an attempt to address the variation in service provision across the area.

5.9 Twenty-six local authorities commissioned external agencies to provide housing advice and housing options work to assist people at risk of homelessness. The most common external agency working in this arena is Citizens Advice. In many cases, authorities were directly funding a dedicated 'housing' specialist staff member to deliver this service.

5.10 An important Edinburgh initiative to co-ordinate housing advice provision across the city was the Edinburgh Housing Advice Network ( EHAN), as launched by the Council in 2005. Bringing together more than 50 advice providers across the city, EHAN aimed to enhance the quality of advice provision through consistent training and exchange of good practice ideas. EHAN may well contribute to prevention. (although the network's remit is much broader than this).

5.11 Another form of housing advice network commended in DCLG guidance for English LAs is where a housing advice team is integrated within a framework of agencies working with people at risk of homelessness (e.g. health visitors or support provider agencies) ³³. Such organisations are strongly placed to provide advice staff with early warning of cases where homelessness may be imminently in prospect. Hence, the prospects of homelessness prevention should be much enhanced. Whilst most Scottish LAs reported a firm commitment to 'early intervention' in principle, formal networks of this kind were not identified (though it is possible that existing arrangements of this type were simply not mentioned by research interviewees).

Housing advice staff training

5.12 As illustrated by telephone survey responses, LAs were highly active in housing advice staff training, with HomePoint being the most frequently mentioned 'standard' of service ³⁴.

5.13 City of Edinburgh Council, for example, was training homelessness staff to Home Point 'Type II services - casework' standards. This enables staff to undertake diagnostic interviews and an assessment of whether the individual has a case that can be pursued. Many other authorities were training frontline staff to the 'Type I services - active information' standard. This focuses on activities such as providing information either orally or in writing, signposting (directing the enquiry to the appropriate agency) and the explanation of technical terms. Training in Home Point 'Type III services - advocacy and mediation' was also reported, though this was confined to external agencies, primarily because it requires independence from the Council ³⁵.

Nature of services provided

5.14 According to the national survey, most LAs provide housing advice customised to the circumstances and needs of individual homeless applicants. Help of this kind is sometimes described by the term 'personal housing plan' delivered through a 'housing options' interview (see Chapter Four). In Edinburgh, for example, homeless applicants contacting the Council's centrally-based Housing Options Team are helped to develop a housing action plan setting out (a) the options open to the service user and the actions the service user needs to undertake, and (b) the actions to be taken by the Council to help in achieving the service user's preferred outcome.

5.15 Such help is more far-reaching than simply providing standard information on accommodation opportunities in the locality - e.g. lists of private landlords or B&B establishments. In some authorities, assisting people at risk of homelessness involves advice officers helping service users to complete RSL application forms or making direct contact with landlords on clients' behalf.

5.16 The advice role can also, as in Stirling, extend to visiting council tenants at risk of eviction for rent arrears (see also Chapter Eight). In East Dunbartonshire, advisers' role in assisting homelessness applicants to appeal assessment or tenancy offer decisions was also presented as an aspect of homelessness prevention.

5.17 Some local authorities target housing advice work at particular need groups - e.g. young people or community care needs groups. In two LAs (Dundee and East Dunbartonshire) it was routine for personal housing plans to be produced for all non-priority homeless cases. East Dunbartonshire's scheme was described as highly successful, with 85 per cent of cases resulting in a positive outcome (returned home/ received offer of housing/ won appeal against decision).

Outreach services

5.18 Outreach services can help to serve the most vulnerable groups of people, and those living in areas remote from council offices. The term 'outreach service' here refers to advice provided on a peripatetic or 'surgery-style' basis where advice staff periodically 'set up shop' away from their normal office location - e.g. in an outlying council office or at a non-office location which people at risk of homelessness are likely to find more convenient (e.g. day centre or custodial institution). Most LAs reported some form of housing advice outreach provision as part of their prevention services. Only four - Clackmannanshire, Falkirk, Midlothian and Shetland - did not.

5.19 Advice services provided on an outreach basis varied in their scale and scope. The most common model, operated by 12 local authorities, involved work with prisoners. Advice surgeries in remote and Island communities were also common amongst rural LAs.

5.20 Other types of outreach work offered included:

• Surgery-style sessions in supported accommodation projects for young people and other community care groups
• Work with rough sleepers
• General drop-in sessions in local housing offices and homeless hostels.

Assessing service effectiveness and success

5.21 Table 3.5 in Chapter Three presents a breakdown of HL1 cases logged as 'advice & assistance only' to show the rehousing outcomes resulting. The majority of such service users 'returned to their former home' or moved in with friends or other relatives. Only a small number were rehoused in the private sector. It is difficult to know to what extent these recorded 'outcomes' were, in fact, influenced by advice & assistance provided. Also, the definition of advice & assistance as used here is likely to be a very broad one. It might well, for example, encompass cases where family mediation intervention succeeds in enabling a young person to return to the family home. Here, a 'returned to former accommodation' outcome could indicate 'success'. For many advice service users, however, such outcomes might not be regarded as such (see paras 6.33-6.34).

5.22 The case study LAs generally found it difficult to respond to our requests for statistical evidence of housing advice service effectiveness in relation to homelessness prevention. In part, as noted at the start of this chapter, this reflected the difficulty of identifying 'prevention' cases within the overall caseloads of housing advice teams. In one case study LA, the issue was complicated by the existence of multiple (and, apparently, partially overlapping) housing advice record systems.

5.23 Two case study LAs - East Dunbartonshire and Edinburgh - provided simple 'housing outcomes' data for advice cases handled in 2005/06. As shown in Table 5.2 (a), an apparently creditable 26 per cent of East Dunbartonshire cases were recorded as resulting in the applicant being 'housed'. Edinburgh's records showed around four per cent of advice cases as leading to the applicant being rehoused (in the social or private sectors). Whilst this figure appears comparatively small alongside that for East Dunbartonshire, the bases on which the two sets of figures were collected may well have differed so direct comparison is probably not appropriate. In addition, 11 per cent of Edinburgh cases 'returned to accommodation'.

5.24 It should, of course, be appreciated that the figures set out in Tables 5.2(a) and (b) reflect only the immediate outcome for the advice service users enumerated. None of the case study authorities routinely monitored the extent to which accommodation accessed with the help of housing advice staff was retained in the medium and longer term. Even in terms of recording short term outcomes the figures cited here are far from ideal in terms of assessing 'success' in homelessness prevention. Some of the East Dunbartonshire 'outcome' categories are somewhat ambiguous in this respect. Examples include assisting service users to appeal homelessness decisions (given that such an outcome indicates an acceptance on the authority's part that the household was, indeed, legally homeless ³⁶). In the Edinburgh case, the 'outcome' categories are something of a mixture of 'actions taken' (e.g. 'advice only') and housing consequences for service users (e.g. rehoused local authority'). Somewhat problematically, the 'returned home' category could encompass both people who had successfully defended their right to occupy independent tenancies and the somewhat contrasting group returning to the parental home.

5.25 It is also very difficult to explain the apparent inconsistency between the figures in Table 5.2 indicating that only a small proportion of housing advice service users subsequently 'returned home' (especially in East Dunbartonshire) with the HL1 analysis (see Table 3.5) showing such outcomes as the largest single category of advice & assistance outcomes at the national scale.

5.26 Most housing advice practitioners would, no doubt, accept that their 'success' in preventing homelessness should be judged not just in terms of the immediate outcome of an advice consultation, but in terms of whether the intervention helps an otherwise homeless household to find a 'sustainable housing solution'. Such a mentality is encouraged by a statutory performance measure recently introduced by DCLG for English local authorities. This obliges them to record advice interventions for homeless households which facilitate housing solutions of at least six months duration ³⁷. Depending on whether the measure turns out to be practicable, the Scottish Executive might consider the possible adoption of a similar measure.

Table 5.2 - Advice & assistance cases, 2005/06: breakdown by housing outcome

(a) East Dunbartonshire

Source: East Dunbartonshire Council

(b) Edinburgh

Source: City of Edinburgh Council

5.27 One other case study LA comment relevant to the issue of 'service effectiveness' was Edinburgh's observation that advice work tends to be essentially reactive. Hence, people lacking in confidence and potentially in greater need than bolder individuals may tend to be excluded from the service. More active provision on an outreach basis was seen as necessary to address this issue.

Service costs and funding

5.28 None of the case study LAs was able to specify the costs of its prevention-oriented housing advice services. The factors outlined at the start of this chapter were of major importance here. Clearly, the prospect of calculating unit costs of successful advice interventions is extremely remote (taking account of the lack of information on housing outcomes - see above).

5.29 LAs did, however, provide some information on housing advice service funding sources. In Edinburgh, the creation of specialist advice posts in area housing teams had been made possible through Scottish Executive homelessness strategies funding. Renfrewshire's creation of specialist youth homelessness advice posts was underpinned by Supporting People funding. In Stirling, with advice activity largely the remit of homelessness caseworkers, it is assumed that the service will effectively have been financed from the General Fund.

Chapter summary

5.30 Housing advice can play a crucial role both in terms of helping tenants retain existing accommodation and in helping potentially homeless households find new tenancies. The new emphasis on homelessness prevention has boosted the status of housing advice activities and the staff responsible. In most LAs, prevention-oriented advice is provided by homelessness caseworkers, and by generic housing advice staff. Voluntary agencies also often contribute, generally with respect to specific groups (e.g. young people).

5.31 Most LAs report making available housing advice customised to the needs and circumstances of individual homeless applicants (sometimes under the title 'personal housing plan'). The housing advice role may also include more active assistance such as helping applicants complete RSL application forms or making contact with private landlords on applicants' behalf.

5.32 Statistical data on housing advice service effectiveness in preventing homelessness is thin on the ground. In one case study LA, however, it was reported that more than a quarter of housing advice service users at risk of homelessness were housed as an immediate outcome of their contact with advice staff. Service cost figures were universally unavailable, though this was partly an understandable consequence of way that the service was provided (e.g. by generic homelessness casework staff alongside other duties).

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