Blog by Charlotte Deshmukh, Campaigns Manager at the NHF. Starts at Home Day is the National Housing Federation’s annual spotlight on supported housing. In this blog, find out why this year we’re calling on the government to save our supported housing and why we urgently need MPs to visit schemes.
Supported housing helps thousands of people across England who need help living independently at home. It provides a home for people facing a wide range of challenges like leaving hospital or experiencing homelessness, survivors of domestic abuse and veterans of the armed forces.
Having a safe place to call home, with support workers you trust helping you build skills, access healthcare and employment advice is a lifeline for people who are going through a challenging time in their lives. If people need it, a supported home can be a home for life, providing a secure foundation for disabled people and people with long-term health conditions.
Why is supported housing facing a crisis?
It all starts at home. Without a safe home, we all know just how difficult it would be to live well. This is why for the last nine years we’ve held a ‘Starts at Home’ Day. To celebrate supported housing and the difference it makes to the lives of residents and their families.
However, after years of funding cuts, these vital homes are no longer financially viable. Many are at risk of closure. Our research shows that 1 in 3 supported housing providers had to close schemes last year because of funding pressures, and 3 in 5 are planning to close schemes in the future.
Whilst supported housing providers are struggling to keep their existing schemes open, the government’s own research tells us we should be building more than 28,000 new supported homes a year until 2040.
Without the stable foundation of a supported home, many people will face an uncertain future. Research shows that without supported housing, NHS hospital beds would face 110,000 more days of delayed discharge, and 41,000 more people would face homelessness.
What action must the government take to fix the crisis?
Housing associations want to keep the doors of their schemes open and even have an ambition to invest in much-needed new supported housing. But they can’t do this without adequate funding and a guarantee that the money for support will continue for years to come.
The way supported housing is funded means that the money for housing and the money for support come from different places. Despite a big focus on building social homes at the Spending Review announcement in June, there was no specific funding announced for vital supported services. Without this funding, there is no long-term plan in place to fund the support workers who help residents build a healthy, happy life.
That’s why this Starts at Home Day is an opportunity to tell MPs, councillors and mayors about the crisis, and what we need to do to fix it. On Friday 29 August, we’ll be calling for action for supported housing in crisis. This builds on our ‘Save Our Supported Housing’ campaign #SOSHousing that we launched in April.
We need to use this opportunity to make sure these local decision makers, and the government, know they need to act at the upcoming Autumn Budget. We desperately need the government to give supported housing providers a lifeline to stay afloat. This Starts at Home Day, the National Housing Federation and our members are asking the government to:
- Urgently commit to long-term, sustainable funding for support services in supported homes. This needs to be done at the Autumn Budget and in the forthcoming housing and homelessness strategies.
- Create an emergency fund for supported-housing support services in the Autumn Budget to prevent more schemes from having to close their doors this year.
- Allocate enough of the new Affordable Homes Programme funding to the building of new supported and older persons’ housing and improve the conditions for bidding for small organisations.
If the government takes these actions, supported housing providers will be there, ready to build and grow supported housing for the people in our society who need it the most.
What can supported housing providers do?
To tell the government why they can, and must, take action to save our supported housing, supported housing providers can:
- Invite a local MP, councillor or mayor to visit a scheme. To help you, we’ve put guidance together and a template letter you can use.
- Share support on social media. We’ll be coming to supporters with a social media pack closer to the day. Make sure you’ve signed up to our mailing list to receive this.
- Tell us one of your residents’ stories. You can submit a case study to go on our website, to showcase the real impact supported housing makes to residents’ lives.
- Help us secure press coverage. We are surveying NHF members who provide supported housing, to gauge how many are at risk of closure. Email us at communications@housing.org.uk if you would like to receive this survey.
Find out more about how you can get involved this Starts at Home Day.