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New guidance to help improve housing services for refugees and migrants
Eleven pioneering housing organisations have helped to develop
vital new guidance on housing services to refugees and new migrants
through the two-year 'Opening Doors' project.
The guidance, which is launched nationally this week, was developed
by the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) and hact (the Housing
Associations’ Charitable Trust).
Front-line housing advice officers have a duty to help refugees
granted leave to stay and other new migrants, but the legal
situation and the options for finding them a home are complex. A
new bank of guidance and reference materials is now available to
housing associations and local councils to help them improve their
service in this field.
The guidance includes information on how people enter Britain,
their legal status and entitlements, how to assess housing need and
what other sources of assistance housing authorities can link
into.
The resources now available to housing professionals in the UK
include a toolkit, an on-line pack of training resources, a
legally-vetted housing rights website, and evaluation report from
the project and cases studies drawn from the good work of the pilot
organisations.
The two-year project was supported by Communities and Local
Government and the Housing Corporation, now the Homes and
Communities Agency, and the Tenant Services Authority.
Sarfraz Hussain, Project Director at hact, said: "Opening Doors has
been about housing providers going the extra mile. The partners
have shown that responding to the housing needs of new communities
is as much about vision, passion and energy as it is about
resources".
Richard Capie, CIH Director of Policy and Practice, said: "Many
housing organisations would like to develop their services to
reflect the needs of refugees and other new migrants. In this
project eleven were able to do so, and we can now share this
experience and the material generated.
"CIH hopes that social landlords generally will make use of these
resources, so that in time we see a real transformation in housing
and support services for communities that are often on the margins
of social housing and yet have as much need as anyone else for a
decent and secure home".
Julia Glover, Community Projects Manager at St Vincent’s
Housing Association – one of the pilot organisations –
said: "Taking part in the Opening Doors has been very positive, and
provides a platform from which we can continue and improve.
"Our knowledge and skills working with refugees and new migrants
has vastly improved; this in terms of housing, integration and
partnership working. The Toolkit especially will provide a valuable
resource to housing providers wishing to develop and expand their
services to refugees and new migrants".
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Sarfster
Commented 26 weeks ago
As someone involved in this work, it was great working with such a committed bunch of like minded individuals. If it were ever true that passion is infectious - this group really proved it to me. The lesson is, frontline staff/managers need all the support, encouragement, sharing of learning to help get their ideas off the ground and into practice. This is something that Opening Doors helped to do .
Whilst there are pockets of good practice and evidence that some provides are going the distance to include and provide new people in the community with decent housing and support services - there are still too many providers who haven't even left the starting line! Even worse, it seems all too easy for them to get away with it? Does anyone care? If you look at reports on social exclusion, housing outcomes, health outcomes, community tensions, unemployment figures etc - we should all care. No one benefits from the most excluded groups being forgotten - we all have to pick up the pieces, if not now, in the future.
yours
s