Families and homes: Change Project

Published: 13/06/2023

The Families and Homes Change Project brought together academics, professionals from housing, children and families and adults social care, and people with lived experience. They worked together to develop tools to enable better support for families at the intersection of social care and housing.

Introduction

Holistic, integrated, whole-family support shows ever greater value when working with families who have overlapping social care and housing needs. In the national context of severe financial pressures upon families, reduced housing options and sustained cuts to support services, taking a new approach to working with families in an integrated way makes sense, not just for the people engaging with support but also for those providing services.  

The following resources were generated as part of the Families and Homes Change Project. This project was established in response to growing awareness in research and practitioner communities that while the housing and social care needs of families are often interrelated, efforts to support them can be fragmented across sectors that do not always work closely together. This can result in policies and practices which are in conflict, to the detriment of families at the centre of them.  

The Families and Homes Change Project brought together academics, leaders and practitioners from housing, children and families and adults social care, and people with lived experience of the issues, to formulate responses, solutions and tools to support better alignment and joint working between housing and social care services. The aim is that these resources are utilised to embed change and improve practice to enable better outcomes for families at the intersection of social care and housing.

A brief introduction to the key issues, challenges and opportunities explored in the project resources

This video summarises the issues covered in the Families and Home Change Project. (Length: 4 minutes 55)

Project resources

Supporting families at the intersection of social care and housing: Strategic Briefing (2023)

An evidence base for supporting families at the intersection of social care and housing services.
Read briefing

Supporting legal literacy across social care and housing: Practice Tool (2023)

Setting out some of the key legal duties and powers relevant to families with social care and housing needs.
View tool

Understanding the perspective of a family with lived experience of homelessness, housing and social care

Dr Kesia Reeve and Leanna Fairfax discuss and explore these issues from a family’s perspective.
Listen to podcast

Professional Standards

PQS:KSS - Organisational context | Child and family assessment | Relationships and effective direct work | Developing excellent practitioners | Shaping and influencing the practice system | Effective use of power and authority | Purposeful and effective social work | Creating a context for excellent practice | Designing a system to support effective practice | Developing excellent practitioners | The role of social workers | Effective assessments and outcome based support planning | Direct work with individuals and families | Organisational context | Developing confident and capable social workers | Assuring good social work practice and development | Influencing and governing practice excellence within the organisation and community

CQC - Safe | Effective | Caring | Responsive | Well-led

PCF - Professionalism | Rights, justice and economic wellbeing | Knowledge | Intervention and skills | Diversity and equality | Contexts and organisations | Values and ethics | Critical reflection and analysis | Professional leadership

RCOT - Understanding relationship | Service users | Collaborative | Identify needs