Handing over power
The Housing Bill will mean a huge change in how we tackle homelessness in Wales. The key issue is how we create a genuine partnership with people facing or experiencing it, says John Puzey
‘When I hear the word culture I reach for my gun,’ so said, apparently, Hermann Göring. ‘when I reach for my gun I hear the word culture,’ said Ernest Hemingway justifying his passion for hunting. When I hear the word culture I reach for my copy of the Welsh Housing Bill – well it’s better than being a Nazi or someone who shoots animals.
It’s not that the Bill is a masterpiece of legal prose, whose clauses and sub-sections have me swooning in artistic admiration, it’s just that it’s quite obvious that if its ambitions to fundamentally ackle homelessness in Wales are to are to be achieved then a seismic cultural change in the way we work, the way we collaborate and the way we deliver services will have to happen. When I say we, I don’t just mean us, I mean we – all of us.
For me, there are three aspects to this change: first that we have got to get serious about citizen focused services; second, that we should positively embrace a problem solving way of working with users within a rights framework; and third, that it’s time to put aside the suspicions and mistrust that often exists between services and work more effectively together with and on behalf of citizens in housing need. For me, of course, the key one is the relationship between local authorities, RSLs and Shelter Cymru.
Well-worn terms
Yes I know, ‘citizen focused’, ‘problem solving approaches’, ‘rights’, all these well-worn terms. I’m surprised you’re still reading this. It’s all familiar terminology but I am always surprised how it can be so differently interpreted. Even Shelter Cymru is a familiar enough name in Wales but its role is sometimes completely misunderstood.
The current legal framework for homelessness had to change. It has, perversely, created barriers to helping many people; it’s wasteful and diverts capacity away from resolving problems to policing processes such as intentional homelessness; and it has created a victim mentality among many users trying to demonstrate how desperate they are, rather than encouraging a culture of enabling people to take control of their lives. It has created a service culture prone to system failure, measured by inappropriate indicators and it is inherently patronising.
t is disabling for users, but it can also create poor behaviours and attitudes among service providers and decision makers. The new proposed framework, detailed in the Housing Bill, is more ambitious about working with everyone facing or experiencing homelessness through prevention and alleviation
work. But if our service culture and our relationships and the way we understand and measure success do not change, then its ambitions will not be achieved.
Handing over power
I think the key issue is that we have to be prepared to hand over power. To accept that the critical partnership we must forge is with people facing or actually experiencing homelessness and housing need. Who better to identify what is a successful intervention than the people at the receiving end? Who better to identify and improve service delivery than those who have experienced it?
But it won’t be easy to make this change. To address the mistrust and suspicion that often appears to characterise the relationship between users and services and indeed services and services will take some doing. Lets face it what we are trying to change are behaviours on all sides that have been shaped by the almost 40-year-old legal framework, the huge amount of case law and litigation that has surrounded it and fundamentally, of course, the shortage of homes.
But genuine engagement and partnership with people in housing need can unlock a whole new way of resolving homelessness in Wales. For example, the way we behave within the current framework is often driven by how we measure success. At the moment success is mainly measured by falling homelessness acceptances rather than sustainable solutions and interventions.
We know there are whole numbers
of negative reasons why homelessness presentations may appear to fall. Locking the doors and switching off the phones will do it! But mystery shops have shown that services will sometimes effectively ‘divert’ people away from the statutory route. Often it should be said this is for good reasons but sometimes not and even if for good reasons shouldn’t the user know and been involved in making the choice? From next year the housing options work effectively comes inside the statutory framework, but the issue of what is success and how that drives good service delivery behaviours remains. I believe the partnership with service users is central to defining and achieving success.
Homelessness prevention performance indicator
Shelter Cymru has been calling for the new homelessness prevention performance indicator to be cross-referenced with user feedback simultaneously collected so that the two measurements can be compared and contrasted. Such a dual measurement will then highlight the gaps between the professional assessments of success with those of the people actually receiving the service. The data from this monitoring could provide real qualitative information indicating areas of improvements in service delivery, communications and follow up and support work. Longer term feedback mechanisms could also track the sustainability of the housing option and users’ resilience to future personal crisis.
What is Shelter Cymru’s role in this brave new collaborative world, I hear you ask? Shelter Cymru, with its obsession with rights and legal challenges, always taking the side of the applicant without hearing the whole story. Yes I’ve heard it all. It’s not true of course but a caricature that has grown in the retelling.
Independent service
The independent service Shelter Cymru provides is essential in a framework and culture that values choice and recognises challenge as a means of improvement, and that also recognises that individuals have a right to advice and representation when they are dissatisfied with services and decisions made by statutory organizations and other providers.
It is crucially a service that helps people understand their rights and responsibilities uninhibited by the inherent conflict of interest of agencies who make the statutory decisions and/or allocate the homes. A service, moreover, that is able to monitor good practice and interpretations of law, a role that becomes even more vital at a time when laws are changing.
But Shelter Cymru must also show that it understands the pressures and challenges facing those other agencies. I think it is more crucial than ever that we understand each other properly; what our roles and responsibilities are and to whom and what we are accountable. We need to develop constructive and robust relationships that recognise the role of challenge, as much as in turn services like Shelter Cymru need to recognise and where possible support the broad community roles of providers and the balances and decisions that need to be made because of pressure on resources and capacity.
At the moment Shelter Cymru is developing a number of service protocols with local authorities that aim to establish good constructive relations for the benefit of our mutual users. We think at the heart of this approach is that we all agree that citizens need to understand their rights and responsibilities in law and be able to make informed choices.
This is important because at the moment ‘rights’ don’t seem to be getting a good press. Some see them as outmoded, getting in the way of practical ‘sleeves rolled up’ ‘sorting people’s problems out’ approaches. I even heard someone say that the last thing we should be doing is telling people their rights as what might be their rights may not be in their best interests! Let’s be clear – citizens have the right to know their rights.
A false dichotomy
Anyway, the idea that rights get in the way of problem solving is of course a false dichotomy. They are not mutually exclusive – in fact they are both necessary in building trust with users and identifying sustainable outcomes. The Housing Bill will set out a new framework of rights and responsibilities that we need to understand and communicate. Rights are essential in ensuring minimum standards are set and are the cornerstone of continuously improving services.
Finally, Shelter Cymru has another important role in contributing to service improvements and sustainable outcomes. In 2012 the organisation, with Welsh Government support, facilitated a ‘citizens panel’, which has helped design a new service user standard framework for use by any agency wishing to test and improve its own systems. More recently a successful Big Lottery bid has meant that the work of the panel can be further developed and enhanced over the coming period as a resource for other services wanting to develop genuine partnerships with users.
Shelter Cymru is changing: changing to meet the continuous and increasingly complex demand from people in need; changing so that as public finances are squeezed it is able to deliver services in more effective ways to even more people; changing to prepare for a new legal framework yes; but most crucially changing to take its place as a major partner in the biggest change in culture and relationships in our 33-year history.
John Puzey is director of Shelter Cymru