Week notes 3 & 4: Hope, Kindness and Caring
Three words — hope, kindness, and caring — summarise my second week as Director of Care, Health and Wellbeing at South Yorkshire Housing Association (SYHA).
Hope: Housing First
The ONS estimates that almost 600 homeless people died in England and Wales last year, a rise of 24% in just four years. The figures for Yorkshire and the Humber represent an increase of nearly 60% over the last five years, with men accounting for 84% of the deaths at an average age of 44. The average age of death for homeless women was 42.
Tackling the issues that lie behind these statistics — together with seeing first-hand the increasing number of people sleeping on Sheffield’s streets — was one of my motivations for joining SYHA. In my second week, I was privileged to attend Homeless Link’s independent review of Housing First, an innovative pilot delivered by South Yorkshire Housing Association in partnership with Target Housing and our Commissioners, Rotherham Council. Together, we’re providing homes and support for 20 previously homeless people across Rotherham. The project is delivered using a strength-based approach, where hope is central to everything. Dean and Keeley, featured in this brilliant video, explain it much better than me.
The Housing First approach is built on the principle that housing is a basic human right. It was developed in New York in 1992 and now runs in the USA, Canada, Denmark, Finland and France, with widespread success. Ultimately, it does what it says on the tin. It puts housing someone in a stable and longer-term home first, as this is seen as the foundation for everything else.
Housing First is just one of the initiatives that South Yorkshire Housing Association is delivering to support the reduction of homelessness in the Sheffield City Region. It is not a ‘one size fits all model’ and it isn’t a replacement for existing services like hostels, but we’re hoping that this pilot will demonstrate that Housing First is a valuable part of the support ecosystem for homeless people.
Unlike other models, individuals aren’t asked to progress through treatment services before being offered their own home. Nothing is asked, other than a willingness to maintain a tenancy agreement; Housing First provides a home and open-ended personalised support for as long as the person wants it.
From the independent review and chatting with the Housing First team at SYHA including Gareth, and keyworkers Claire, Aneta and Rita, what I’ve learnt is that, as a housing provider, using our own assets (houses) enables us to do three things that are fundamental to the Housing First approach:
- We can ensure that the home is available at the exact time that the person is ready
- We can ensure that the home is handpicked to best suit the customer; due to our wide variety of properties, we can find homes in an appropriate location for the individual, such as a safe community away from previous locations and associates
- We can guarantee a home for as long as the person wants, regardless of their wider circumstances.
But the bricks and mortar are just the first step. Our keyworkers talked to me about some of the challenges the people face once settled in their home, including gaining medical support to overcome addiction — due to the addiction cycle — and how often the addiction is a coping mechanism masking deep-rooted traumas, often from childhood.
All too often other programmes require people who face addiction to overcome it before they’re eligible for psychological support or are offered a home. This is something that the support package provided by Housing First can begin to change to ensure that our approach is integrated within the wider health and care system.
Kindness: Lessons from Alison Inman
This week I also had the pleasure of attending Alison Inman’s inspiring talk on Leadership and life. Alison covered a lot (read Hannah’s brilliant summary) but four things she said stuck with me:
- Be kind. Be the best human you can be. Don’t be a dick.
- Challenge yourself to work with people who don’t think you’re great. You’ll learn the most from them.
- Sometimes you’re just not the right person no matter how hard you try. It’s ok to walk away.
- Don’t compare your worst bits to others’ best bits. Start with your five strengths not your five weaknesses.
Alison also talked about Julian Unwin (the person I think we’d all like to be when we grow up) and her report examining the role of kindness in public policy, an important read for all of us.
Caring: Placeshapers
Julia Unwin’s work was also a big topic of conversation at a roundtable dinner that I attended on Wednesday night with senior colleagues from SYHA, the Director of PlaceShapers, Rachael Orr, and PlaceShaper members from across the North.
Social change consultant, Steve Wyler, talked us through the Civil Society Futures report launched in November 2018 and the PACT themes (Power, Accountability, Connection, Trust), which Julia Unwin explains in this video. The issue of shifting power so that everyone is involved in decision-making is one that particularly resonates with me. We learned how and what the individual PlaceShaper organisations are already doing against the PACT themes, including as part of this year’s PlaceShaper campaign theme, ‘We Care’. We also discussed how the PlaceShapers network is incredibly well placed to build further momentum for positive practice.
As someone with a fresh pair of eyes, it seems to me that South Yorkshire Housing Association is doing a lot to help create the caring, re-energised civil society Julia Unwin describes. This includes representation of customers on our Board — we have two resident Board members — and a wide range of co-designed LiveWell projects. Our organisation is enriched through ensuring customers and people with lived experience have an equal voice at the table — not only in the design and implementation of projects and services, but also in wider system change with external commissioners. Many of our LiveWell projects take a strength-based approach, placing hope and empowerment at the centre of people’s journeys.
However, we also recognise that there is room to improve and do more. It’s great that our CEO, Tony Stacey, is challenging us all — SYHA staff and the wider sector — to do just that.
Being practically minded, it was great to see in the Civil Society report a section entitled ‘Putting it into Practice’ (page 43) with a set of questions scored on a sliding scale for individuals and organisations to challenge themselves against the four PACT themes. Being brutally honest about where on the scale you’re at as an individual or organisation isn’t always easy, but it’s the only way to ensure real change. We’re now looking at how we can use the questions across the organisation as a way of self-assessing our performance and challenging ourselves to accelerate our transformation.
Finally, we’re currently recruiting for a new Head of Business Development. If you’ve enjoyed reading about the work that SYHA does and want to be a part of making it happen, please apply by 6 February 2019. In keeping with our support for flexible working practices, we’re happy to consider applications from people wanting part-time and full-time hours.
