Residents' preference strategy

Introduction

Making a positive difference for all residents is our vision. We will create opportunities that change lives through our drive, expertise, resources and passion.

A home is an essential need, it provides us with a sense of belonging, comfort, security, and stability. This strategy sets out CKH commitment to assisting residents and customers who are deaf, blind, who use a wheelchair or residents with a disability – intellectual, development or mobility to ensure everyone can access and use our services. The ultimate aim of this strategy is to ensure all CKH residents are supported to sustain their tenancy with equity, by considering the specific needs or circumstance of a person and understanding that different levels of support are needed to achieve fairness in outcomes.

Anybody can face circumstances temporarily or permanently that will require additional support or a different approach. This might include physical or mental health challenges, specific characteristics such as age or literacy skills, or changes in personal circumstances such as bereavement, job loss or changes in household income. As a housing association we need to ensure that these circumstances do not restrict our residents from accessing our services and opportunities on a fair and equitable basis.

 

16 million people in the UK have a disability. That's 24% of the population. 12m adults in the UK are deaf, have heearing loss or tinnitus. Over 2m people in the UK are living with sight loss. 344 more people became unemployed everyday in the twelve months to February 2024. 1 in 6 adults experience common mental health problems every week. Also 23% of the population suffer anxiety when dealing with service providers. 1 in 11 people have dementia, More than 3 m people are living with cancer. Almost 1.5m reports of domestic abuse related incidents were made to the police.

 

Scope of the strategy

The strategy has been developed to ensure all residents can use our services and maintain their tenancy on a fair and equitable basis and to enable us to deliver our services to suit residents’ needs in the best way possible. This strategy focuses on residents who have capacity to make their own decisions. Where a resident has been assessed as lacking, or believed to lack, capacity to make decisions we will work with their appointed representative. This includes, but is not limited to:

  • Residents in our homes, including general needs, retirement housing, extra care living and shared ownership.
  • Care and LifeLine customers not resident in our homes.
  • Non-residents who access our services, such as ASB perpetrated by a CKH resident, seeking support from community investment activities etc.

 

This strategy will outline our approach to residents using the 3Rs – recognise, respond and appropriately record. In delivering this strategy we will ensure that:

  • Colleagues, contractors, board members and involved residents will use opportunities with residents to identify and appropriately sign post/record residents preferences and adjustments.
  • An annual tenancy visit will be undertaken by Neighbourhood Managers to all general needs homes to confirm information on preferences and adjustments within the household.
  • Preference and known adjustments will be recorded in our housing management system and updated at least annually.
  • Residents are sign posted or referred to the most appropriate support service which may not always be CKH.
  • Residents who are at the highest risk of tenancy failure are supported by the Tenancy Sustainment or ASB teams.
  • All frontline colleagues will have the necessary training and skills for their role including refresher and ongoing training.
  • We will work with residents to monitor the successful implementation of the strategy.

 

Defining preferences

A residents preference will be considered and recorded when they have a particular characteristic or exceptional life event that means they are at risk of losing their home or find it hard to access or understand our services without additional support or reasonable adjustment. If we believe they are unable to take care of themselves or unable to protect themselves against harm or exploitation we will work with the most appropriate partner to provide support.

A resident may need reasonable adjustments, either permanently or on a temporary basis due to eight main reasons.

  • Physical health including age.
  • Mental health.
  • Neurodiversity.
  • Financial and/or digital exclusion.
  • Isolation.
  • Addiction - e.g. drug, alcohol, gambling.
  • Language barrier/translation needs
  • Circumstances - e.g. ASB, domestic abuse, hoarding, bereavement, homelessness, care leaver etc.

Residents must feel empowered to be in control of their everyday life and everyone will be treated as an individual when assessing their preference and any support required.

 

Recognising the need for adjustments?

Not everyone who needs support to access our services or maintain their tenancy, will recognise this. However, it is essential that those that do are identified as soon as practical to ensure that they receive the right support to maintain their tenancy or access services. A resident’s preference may be identified by:

  • residents when they apply for housing or contact us, or self-refer
  • any member of CKH staff who has contact with residents in person, on the phone or through any other channel of communication
  • our contractors
  • a referral from an external agency or organisation.

CKH will provide opportunities for residents to identify their own preferences, and the reasonable adjustments they identify as helping them to access services fairly whenever they contact us. Where possible, these reasonable adjustments will be from the list CKH maintains as part of its Reasonable Adjustment Policy. Should additional adjustments be required these will be assessed on a case by case basis. We will also work with other agencies where appropriate to identify and support residents with preferences. With the resident’s consent, this will be recorded on our Housing Management System.

 

New residents

Everyone will be assessed at the point of applying for housing to see whether they have any support needs or preferences to enable them to access our services or maintain their tenancy. We will work with local authorities to ensure they provide relevant and up to date information, so we are aware of any additional preferences. The sign-up process and 6 week visit for all new residents will be another opportunity to identify any support needs including any assistance required to help them sustain their tenancy.

When anyone moves into retirement housing the Scheme Manager will review the resident’s needs.

On application for either Extra Care housing, Community Care or at the time of installation of LifeLine services, we will conduct an individual assessment and this will be reviewed regularly. This identifies any support needs and how these will be meet.

When anyone moves into CKH Temporary Accommodation, we will develop a support plan and review this regularly.  When they move to CKH permanent accommodation, the tenant will receive resettlement support.

Any residents who are under 25 or are Care Leavers will be referred to the Tenancy Sustainment team for additional support, working in conjunction with the leaving care service.

 

Existing Residents

There are often many opportunities to identify resident who might have support needs that develop after they move in. We will continue to use these opportunities in order to ensure residents are able to sustain their tenancy. These include:

  • Contact by residents in person or by phone, email or Live Chat regarding rents, anti social behaviour, complaints, service requests, reporting repairs etc.
  • Home visits by frontline colleagues including for reports or antisocial behaviour or breach of tenancy conditions.
  • Visit by contractors to carry out repairs or other works including improvement works.
  • Contact by third party eg concerns raised by neighbours/friends/relatives or other service providers including voluntary and statutory bodies.
  • Referrals from partners who have reason to believe a resident is in need of additional support eg social care.

Scheme Managers will work with all residents living in retirement housing to understand any additional support needs at sign-up and review this on an annual basis or as need arises. They will also discuss any change in needs during weekly contacts. They are not care plans but include practical information such as next of kin, GP details, and the level of support and involvement the individual wants.  The Scheme Manager will liaise with GP’s, Adult Social Care and other services as appropriate to ensure their residents receive the support that they need to sustain their tenancy.

All retirement homes have a fixed LifeLine service and so that they can contact the LifeLine service 24 hours a day in the event of an emergency such as a fall.

At least once a year we will visit all general needs and retirement housing homes for an annual property visit. During this visit we will update our records to understand our residents’ vulnerabilities and record any reasonable adjustments the household needs.

 

Respond

Each service area will consider what additional support, consideration or variation in usual service provision is appropriate for vulnerable residents. This will vary from service to service but some examples are allowing longer for customers to answer their door when we call for an appointment; arranging morning or afternoon appointments, following up phone calls with email.

We will develop our services and put in place reasonable adjustments to support residents to access and interact with services to enable them to maintain their tenancy. When we are not best placed to offer the support they need, we will work with a range of statutory and other partners to deliver the support by those with the most appropriate expertise.

Our response will be achieved by:

  • Sharing of information on services for example through team meetings.
  • Providing online training/support to housing applicants to help them manage and sustain their future tenancy.
  • Continuing to work with our partner agencies to support with aids and adaptations.
  • Funding dedicated Tenancy Sustainment, Anti-social Behaviour, Care and LifeLine teams.
    • Prompt referral to the Tenancy Sustainment team via an internal referral and screening process.
    • Ensuring that the specialist teams have up to date and relevant Safeguarding knowledge and training.
  • Providing resettlement support to tenants who have experienced homelessness who are new into tenancy, and work with Leaving Care Teams to best support care leavers.
  • Maintaining our Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance Accreditation for the services we provide to domestic abuse survivors.
  • Ensuring adapted properties are re-let to people needing adaptions whenever possible.
  • Attending and being active partners in local partnership meetings such as Safer Peterborough Partnership.
  • Reviewing our policies and procedures on a regular basis.
  • Maintaining our Be Kind Fund to help people in financial hardship with basic amenities such as white goods and fuel support.
  • Promote and encouraging residents living in general needs accommodation to use LifeLine and/or CKH Care for alarm and other services as well as other assistive technologies when needed.
  • Supporting and promoting money management, wellbeing and IT course offered by ourselves and partners.
  • Working in close partnership with key agencies such as CAB, Adult Social Care, Children’s Services and Leaving Care services.
  • Ensuring residents are provided with an opportunity to provide feedback on the support they have received to further shape the delivery of the service.

 

Training to respond appropriately

It is important to state we do not expect our workforce to provide or hold any medical knowledge (though we recruit employees who work with residents at the highest risk of losing their tenancy on the basis of their additional skills and knowledge, and continue to invest in their learning and development).

We will provide awareness training to enable all resident facing employees to identify, understand and respond appropriately to residents preferences by:

  • Ensuring all front-line colleagues have generic training on identifying preferences and safeguarding concerns.
  • Ensuring all specialist support colleagues complete training including any best practice and learning, on identifying residents both adults and children – who need safeguarding.
  • Ensuring everyone receives training on equity and diversity.
  • Developing and implementing online neurodiversity training for all colleagues.
  • Ensure all colleagues complete regular refresher training.
  • Providing other appropriate and timely training for colleagues eg on new legislation.
  • Providing funding and support for colleagues to undertake professional qualifications and memberships.

 

Record

We will proactively identify and record our residents’ preferences to understand who needs support and ensure the response is suitable for the individual.

We will do this through:

  • Using standardised forms at sign-up and the six-week visit.
  • Completing an annual Property Condition inspection of all general needs and retirement housing homes.
  • When necessary complete risk assessments for cases of antisocial behaviour and tenancy sustainment.
  • Utilising Scheme Managers in retirement housing accommodation.
  • Ensuring the recording of adjustments is standardised and recorded on our Housing Management system and regularly monitored, audited and updated.
  • Working closely with contractors who are visiting our residents’ homes.
  • Listening to and acting on our partners/third party referrals.
  • For leaseholders and shared owners, we will ask about preferences when they sign their lease.

 

Continuous improvement

We will regularly assess how effective our strategy is through feedback and surveys and use the information to review and update our Residents Preference Strategy by staying informed of the emerging challenges, changes to regulation and best practice. We will continue to proactively engage with safeguarding partnerships, including disseminating learning from serious case reviews and partnership audits.

 

Protected Characteristics

CKH is required to consider any potential impacts its services and policies might have on particular groups, such as people sharing a protected characteristic as defined by the Equality Act 2010. These are:

  • age
  • gender reassignment
  • being married or in a civil partnership
  • being pregnant or on maternity leave
  • disability
  • race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
  • religion or belief
  • sex
  • sexual orientation

We do not define all people with a protected characteristic as a specific group but when managing tenancies and leases and delivering services, we will consider whether our services have an unfair or disproportionate impact on the resident compared with another resident who does not have a protected characteristic. To do this Equality Impact Assessments will be completed for all frontline policies to ensure they do not impact negatively on any protected group.

 

Monitoring and review

The strategy was written and approved in April 2024 and will be reviewed every year – next review March 2025.