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 audit report in Wales said that 'little progress' had been made in improving the planning and delivery of housing services for people with mental health needs. Strategic planning remained of poor quality; and joint planning between local health, social care, and housing service providers was not always effective. The Assembly Government's monitoring of the delivery of its housing targets had also been ineffective.
Source: Housing Services for Adults with Mental Health Needs, Wales Audit Office
Links: Report | WAO press release | NHS Wales press release | BBC report | Public Finance report
Date: 2010-Nov
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 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
An article examined the role of housing professionals in the management of cases of anti-social behaviour involving people suffering from mental ill-health. Housing practitioners were not adequately equipped to make judgements on the culpability of 'perpetrators' who were suffering mental ill-health, or to ensure that their response was appropriate. This raised questions about the training housing officers received, and whether the competing policy aims of community care and tackling anti-social behavior could be reconciled.
Source: Sadie Parr, 'The role of social housing in the "care" and "control" of tenants with mental health problems', Social Policy and Society, Volume 9 Issue 1
Links: Abstract
Date: 2010-Jan
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