Homelessness prevention by South Norfolk Council

Help Hubs and community connectors

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The context

The nearer a household is to homelessness, the easier it is for a housing agency to identify and ‘own’ a positive prevention outcome, such as direct financial help or advocacy with a landlord. Moving prevention upstream looks more complex. A problem with housing may be only one part of a household’s issues; creating a truly sustainable home may require input from other services.

On a universal model, earlier support has the potential to prevent escalation of a whole range of social harms - amongst which a housing crisis is just one. Whilst harder for each agency to prove causation and ‘own’ outcomes, a low threshold, pan-service approach to ‘early help’ is having impact across a whole range of sectors in South Norfolk.

The intervention

An OFSTED report was a catalyst for Norfolk County Council’s Children’s Services making radical changes to services supporting children and families. The 2013 report found services generally worked in silos and rarely shared information, resulting in duplication, delay and waste. People had to repeat their stories; support was fragmented. Low risk issues experienced by families were often not identified and/or supported by services - with the result problems, needs and harms escalated. Reaching the high level threshold for statutory intervention was all too often the first time families were offered any support.

South Norfolk Council worked with Norfolk County Council to turn this around. They devised an ‘early help’ model of quick access to holistic, tailored support for any resident who didn’t meet statutory thresholds, accessible by a single ‘front door’, behind which multiple agencies collaborated. ‘Early help hubs’ were set up in local areas, with Council, statutory and voluntary partners using simple referral routes, multiagency information-sharing and triage, and a ‘one team’ ethos. A key strand was appointment of six ‘community connectors’ to reach out to families in places they already go (i.e. playgrounds, cafés and community venues), and use a friendly, informal approach to link them into supports.

Whilst not the driving force behind the hubs, housing and related services play a key role within them. Hub partners include housing teams, domestic abuse services, tenancy sustainment, mediation, DWP, employability, benefits, debt advice, mental health support, landlords (both social and private), as well as homelessness services. Early intervention on any problem faced by residents encompasses all issues which may trigger homelessness, with the entire hub focused on keeping residents on ‘universal’ service pathways, avoiding the need for acute crisis interventions from ‘specialist’ teams (such as homelessness or temporary accommodation).

The outcome

Prevention statistics in UK Government data only reflects work carried out within the 56 day legal ‘window’ of the Homelessness Reduction Act (HRA), so don’t capture the bulk of early intervention activity carried out by hubs. However, the rate of homelessness per 1,000 households in South Norfolk shows a sharp downwards trend, from 5.6 in 2013, before the approach changed, to 2.25 in 2021. It is now significantly below English average (6.34), and in the lowest quartile for all English authorities.

The early help approach also led, in the first three years of implementation, to a 20% decrease in children in need, a 20% drop in persistent truancy and 7% reduction in looked after children. 95% of families receiving help through hubs did not see their issues escalate. The New Economy Cost Benefit Analysis tool anticipated savings of £1.2billion Norfolk wide through comprehensive adoption of the approach.

Key insights

• co-location and a ‘one team’ ethos educates professionals from all services on the full range of support available to people they work with, builds inter-agency and interpersonal trust and destabilises silos
• a universal low threshold approach to offering support reduces stigma and catches problems early
• combining housing and benefit teams ensures all tools available to each can be marshalled to prevent crisis; local landlords also benefit from a single platform for quick access to the level of support their tenants need

Find out more…

Kerrie Gallagher, Help Hub Senior Manager
kerrie.gallagher@southnorfolkandbroadland.gov.uk

Richard Dunsire, Housing and Wellbeing Senior Manager,
richard.dunsire@southnorfolkandbroadland.gov.uk