Learning more about our support for people at risk of homelessness
In last week’s note I wrote about the rough sleeper count that I took part in the previous week. To follow that up, on Wednesday I joined nine other colleagues for a ‘meet the service’ day where we were taken through other areas of the work that colleagues in the Benefits & Housing Needs service do. It’s awesome that the service makes the time to do this – the main purpose being to help colleagues from across other Council services think about how their teams’ work can contribute towards reducing the risk of people becoming homeless in Hackney.
We learned that Hackney is very unusual in having brought benefits and housing needs together in a single team. This makes it easier for the teams to work in an integrated way and we were given lots of examples of how they are able to work with residents to help them manage debt and guide them towards support such as financial advice, employment support and health services. As with the colleagues I met when I joined the rough sleeper count, I was impressed by the compassion that the team showed for the people they support, even when it isn’t easy for them to meet their needs.
Something that stuck with me is how long term ‘temporary accommodation’ often is. It’s not unusual for individuals and families to be in temporary housing for ten years or more, and from visiting one of our hostels as part of the day it was evident that this is far from a low cost or comfortable option for those people. Many areas of London have seen big increases in the cost of housing and reduced availability of social housing, but the dramatic changes in Hackney’s rental market mean that there are also very few affordable rented options available through private landlords, so the team have to work incredibly hard to find suitable accommodation and there is often a very long wait. Sometimes families are offered homes outside of London, but this can be very difficult for them given family ties, school places and work in Hackney. The day gave me a really valuable insight into the team’s work and respect for what they do at the sharp end of many of society’s most challenging issues.
I’m pleased that our teams in HackIT have been working with the Benefits & Housing Needs service to help them with this important work. Our work together in preparing for the introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act a couple of years ago was an important first step, which has made the process of assessing people’s needs much more efficient and compassionate. And this is now being taken further through the service redesign work that is being delivered in partnership with FutureGov and Made Tech. Projects such as Single View are already showing real promise, helping to reduce the time it takes to look up information across multiple systems by 10 – 25 minutes per case.
LOTI update
I finished the week by joining other CIOs from the LOTI councils for our regular LOTI member meeting. I thought that this was the best meeting yet, with a good showing from across the councils. It was also great to have new faces joining the team, with Kit and Steve who have recently started as the technology and data leads for Greenwich and Kingston | Sutton coming to their first LOTI meeting. We covered a range of topics including data analytics projects, getting the most out of our supplier relationships and reflecting on what LOTI will have achieved when it reaches its first anniversary in the summer.
You can read more about the things we covered in the latest weeknote from the LOTI team here: https://medium.com/loti/loti-weeknote-27-d382ab23b05d.
I also…
- Had a good planning meeting with Katharine, Mac, Nick and Tom, making sure that we’re well prepared for the quarterly Information Governance Group meeting which is due in a few weeks time.
- Was very impressed with the progress that Tony has made working with finance colleagues to make sure that the Print Unit is in a sustainable financial position. What had been reported as a significant shortfall at the start of the year is now a balanced budget and Tony’s identified several good ideas for ways we can develop the service further and continue to provide high quality, good value print services for Hackney.
- Went with Lucy and Meg to join the regular ‘IT enabler’ board meeting, where we reviewed the progress of the technology and data elements of health and social care integration across the City and Hackney.
- Chaired the Council’s corporate resilience group, which was a useful opportunity to reflect on the reviews of the Council’s responses to a couple of recent major incidents (a fire and a major flood). Teams from across the Council’s services did a great job responding to the incidents, making sure that residents were supported and keeping focus on the longer term recovery work. It was encouraging to see how the Council is able to make a difference for our local community.
- Had a really good meeting with Kit, Cate and Eddie at the start of the day on Friday, talking through ways that we could link up OneTeamGov and LOTI as part of building the community of people working to transform local public services in London.
- Felt like I had a mini-breakthrough in my swimming lesson when there was a moment when it actually felt like my limbs were working together to move me through the water with reasonable grace. This might not have been apparent to anyone watching, but I felt encouraged nonetheless.
Something I’m learning
On Tuesday night I relearned how to change tyres on a bike (it’s a very long time since I last did that). I was pleased to find that I managed to remember how to do it and even more pleased to find that my wheels stayed on and the tyres stayed inflated when I rode to work the next morning. I’m now hoping that the new tyres will be more robust and I don’t have a repeat of last Monday morning’s puncture…
bytherye 