The following article, by Housing Options lead advisor Maurice Harker, is from Community Connecting Magazine (Issue 9).

Housing and Valuing People Now

What is the DCLG

In the middle of last year I had an invitation out of the blue to visit the Department of Communities and Local Government. This may not mean much to you but it is the government department that, amongst other things, looks after housing and planning for housing. Furthermore it has become more important recently. The Department used to be called the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and that was John Prescott who seemed to have been given a bit of a government job lot. Before that it was the Department of Environment Transport and the Regions. Most confusing.

The new department has become the means for a big initiative in housing. This was started when Gordon Brown was Treasury Minister when he commissioned a report on housing from an economist called Kate Barker ^[1]. She said houses were too expensive, rents are too high, people can't afford to buy or move and the whole housing system is grinding to an inefficient halt. Waiting lists too long, many not able to afford to buy a home of their own. She said we have to build more homes and in particular more affordable homes. This means putting in some money and when Gordon moved from No 11 to No 10 to become prime minister he put in the money. A big new housing programme was announced in the summer of 2007.

What housing choices

At the same time the government was also looking at Valuing People and at progress since 2001. The aim for housing was a choice of where and how you live. However, most people, according to Kate Barker, have to more or less take what they can get and for people with learning disabilities it tends to be less rather than more. A Community Care survey last year said 65% of people with a learning difficulty want a home of their own. In fact only 15% have anything like that.

So when I was asked to go to the Department of Communities and Local Government I was very pleased because they wanted to know about opportunity in housing for people with learning disability. They have a very big glass office near Victoria Station where the lifts go up and down nice and quickly. That always gives a good impression. There are lots of people in suits in a large reception area where the roof is so high that you can hear the winds whistling about and they scribble in expensive leather bound notebooks and shake hands with each other. Probably making expensive housing plans I thought.

The people I met were very nice. They asked me about opportunities in housing for people with a learning disability and I said there really aren't many opportunities at all. 'Most don't have their own home,' I said, 'and most don't have a choice of where or how they live.' ^[2]

'Well we've been asked to think about how we can help with the Valuing People aims for services, what can we do?'

'How long have you got?' I said.

'Well we've got to launch an important Report at 6 o'clock so not that long.' They said.

Just a short to do list

So instead of the long list I was thinking about I had to keep it short. People don't get much help with finding somewhere to live. They need more help. They need better information about how to find housing. Social services and housing departments need to work together so that you can get housing and the support you need for daily living. The Department of Communities and Local Government could be enormously helpful if they could improve housing opportunities for people with disabilities. Rules about who should get money for housing and support are not always very helpful either. That's a common reason why people can't get their own home. There are still lots of people in residential care homes when they should have a proper home. We would like some of Gordon Brown's new housing money too, that would help. Some of that goes into low cost home ownership, that can help too. The rules about housing benefit for rented housing could be improved and families who can afford it could be encouraged to put money towards the cost of a new home. Then there are older residential services funded from health money when hospitals closed. We could knock them down and use the money for something better.

By this time they were getting near their big Report launch when they would have to go and make speeches of their own but they were very helpful.'Come back in a couple of weeks' they said, 'and we'll talk about it with a larger group of us'. The ideas about housing can go into the Report about Valuing People.

And so it was. Access to housing is one of the five main priorities in the Valuing People Now: from Progress to Transition put out last December. It recognises the difficulty people have been having in getting a home of their own.

It said that there should be a joint Department of Communities and Local Government/Department of Health housing programme to promote the inclusion of people with learning disabiltiies into mainstream housing.

You probably read the details when it came out. Some of the things we reported from Housing Options have been included in the paper. The problems of opportunity in housing were highlighted. We have long argued that housing should be one of the main planks of any strategy for people with learning disabilities, and were glad to have been there to help with the planking.

An offer to take seriously

What I felt when we met was that we were taken seriously and the offer of help extended from this government department for housing was very genuine. It can only improve peoples' housing opportunities, and we are all for bringing people with learning disabilties into the mainstream from which they have been excluded for so long.

The paper was light on how this better opportunity is actually to be delivered. The overall aim of the orginal Valuing People paper, and the lack of achievement are re-stated, but without giving much detail of ways and means for achievement. Partnership Boards are given some responsibility for delivery, but they have limited real executive or management function. Individual budgets and direct payments are cited as ways of increasing housing choice, but without an indication of how they can find you a home.

There is time for attention these practical matters of detail and delivery. A good partnership with the Department of Communities and Local Government can help enormously. Perhaps we can walk the housing plank together with something better at the end of it than just a sinking feeling.

Maurice Harker
harker@housingoptions.org.uk

[1] Barker K (2003) Review of Housing Supply: Securing our Future Needs HMSO
[2] Adults With Learning Disability In England - National Survey 2003-4

Housing Options, Stanelaw House, Sutton Lane, Sutton, Witney, Oxfordshire, OX29 5RY, United Kingdom
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