A report highlighted areas of positive practice within the Supporting People programme, with the aim of helping local authorities when making difficult decisions about future service provision. The importance of seeking to maintain a strategic and managed approach, even in the face of resource and time constraints, was critical.
Source: Supporting People: Supporting Service Change in a Time of Pressure – Sharing lessons for service reconfiguration and decommissioning, Chartered Institute of Housing
Links: Report
Notes: The Supporting People programme provides housing-related support services to enable vulnerable people to live independently.
Date: 2010-Dec
An independent study found that the savings to other services of the Supporting People Programme in Wales (providing housing-related support to vulnerable people) 'far outweighed' the cost of the scheme.
Source: Mansel Aylward, Kerry Bailey, Ceri Phillips, Keith Cox and Eleanor Higgins, The Supporting People Programme in Wales: Final Report, Welsh Assembly Government
Links: Report | Summary | WAG press release | NHS Wales press release
Date: 2010-Nov
A report (by an official advisory body) examined how blind and partially sighted people navigated their local streets. Some street design features that ought to help people with low vision were hindering them instead. National guidance needed to be clearer, and local authorities needed to co-ordinate better across boundaries.
Source: Ross Atkin, Sight Line: Designing better streets for people with low vision, Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment
Links: Report
Date: 2010-Oct
Two linked reports said that supported housing providers were failing to respect the tenancy rights of learning-disabled people.
Source: Alicia Wood with Rob Greig, Steve Strong and Claire Hall, The Real Tenancy Test: Tenancy rights in supported living, National Development Team for Inclusion | Alicia Wood and Rob Greig, Supported Living: Making the Move – Developing supported living options for people with learning disabilities, National Development Team for Inclusion
Links: Report (1) | Report (2) | Community Care report
Date: 2010-Sep
A report examined housing-related support services in Wales. It said that high-quality services were crucial given the vulnerability of users; and, in many cases, support services made a real difference to the quality of service users' lives. Yet defining, measuring, and commissioning for 'quality' were less straightforward in this field than in others. This could make achieving high quality more challenging than in other service areas.
Source: Delivering Quality in Housing-Related Support: Views from the sector, Housemark Cymru
Links: Report
Date: 2010-Feb
The government responded to a report by a committee of MPs on the Supporting People programme (provision of housing-related support services to enable vulnerable people to live independently). It welcomed the report's endorsement of the decision to remove the 'ring fence' from the programme in order to devolve decision-making and control over budgets to the local level.
Source: Government Response to the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee Report into the Supporting People Programme, Cm 7790, Department for Communities and Local Government/TSO
Links: Response | MPs report
Date: 2010-Jan