Matt Kennedy reports on progress on private renting and mental health.
One year on from the publication of Tyfu Tai Cymru’s Private renting and mental health: A way forward report, we’re pleased to report considerable progress. And with more positive developments on the horizon, we thought it a good time to update people on what has changed. Tyfu Tai Cymru has been working alongside Tai Pawb and Welsh Government to make the recommendations from our research a reality.
Comprehensive advice and information
Our research found that many landlords and tenants felt they never had enough information to know how best to support tenants experiencing mental health problems to stay in their homes. To address this, Welsh Government is working with Rent Smart Wales (RSW) to develop a directory to be hosted on the Rent Smart Wales website as a single point of information for tenants and landlords alike.
Opportunities to increase skills and confidence
Our report found that some landlords didn’t feel confident renting to someone with a mental health issue. Encouragingly, however, some landlords were using their own insight and expertise following either personal experience of mental health issues, or those of family and friends to support tenants and make reasonable adjustments to help people stay in their home. The report identified the re-licencing process as a point in time to provide landlords with more training and information. Rent Smart Wales has now developed an equalities training package, created by Tai Pawb that includes a module focussing on mental health.
Crisis and emergency accommodation
A key part of providing people with better mental health services is the effective link-up between accommodation and health services that responds to people’s needs in times of crisis. We were really pleased to see that the Welsh Government has recognised the need for improvement via the most recent iteration of its strategy – Together for Mental Health. The strategy reflects on the need for constancy in commissioning, to learn from what works and the importance of better links between community mental health teams and housing organisations.
Truly tenure neutral support
Housing Support Grant (formerly Supporting People) plays a vital role in helping a wide variety of people stay well and live independently regardless of housing tenure. Our research found that private landlords and tenants were often unaware of the existence of support services that they could access. Recognising this gap in knowledge, local authorities’ will collect data monitoring and escalate their efforts to inform private landlords of these key services.
We will continue to work with Tai Pawb and Welsh Government to ensure further progress on the topics outlined in this article as well as pushing for change in the other aspects the research reflected on, such as tackling discrimination and increasing tenant involvement.
Matt Kennedy is policy and public affairs manager at CIH Cymru