Written evidence submitted by Barnardo’s [EXA 102]

About Barnardo’s

Barnardo’s is the UK’s largest national children’s charity. In 2020-21 we supported 382,872 children, young people, parents and carers, through almost 800 services and partnerships. Barnardo’s has a long history of providing services to children and young people not living with their parents – we were founded to provide food, shelter and skills to children living on the streets of Victorian London. Today we provide support to families who are struggling; we are the largest voluntary provider of adoption and fostering services; and we provide support to care leavers up to the age of 25.

Barnardo’s provides accommodation that is exempt from local housing allowance caps in the form of semi-independent accommodation, for young people who are 16 or over. This accommodation provides young people who are often living alone for the first time with their own accommodation, as well as access to shared areas and support from key workers. The aim is to work with the young people to develop their independence skills and enable them to move on into their own independent accommodation, usually within a two-year time frame. We believe this provides a valuable service model to help young people who would otherwise struggle to live independently. Our main provision of semi-independent accommodation for young people is in the Northwest of England, where we offer 7 buildings which range in size from 25 units to just 5. The majority of this is commissioned by local authorities who pay for the ‘support’ to the young people, while the accommodation is funded through housing benefit.

This response draws on our experience of providing this work in the current market. We do not seek to provide an answer to all the questions raised by the Committee but rather to focus our response on those which are of most relevant to our experience of frontline practice, specifically as it relates to vulnerable young people.

Summary

• Good quality semi-independent accommodation has a vital role to play in supporting vulnerable young people towards living independently.
• Providing good quality semi-independent accommodation at a reasonable price, requires good working relationships between partners – working together is key to the development of effective cost-effective solutions. 
• Exempt accommodation provided to younger people would benefit from increased regulatory oversight – however any regime created should build upon existing evidence on what works to support this cohort.

What is the quality of exempt housing provision? 

Exempt accommodation is shared housing often used as accommodation for vulnerable people. The accommodation comes with an element of support and supervision provided to the tenant and this means it is exempt from Local Housing Allowance (LHA) caps. In relation to young people this type of accommodation is often used for older children and young people who are in, or have recently left care, or those who are homeless for another reason. At its best the accommodation can provide young people with important support - by working in partnership with other support agencies and stakeholders, residents can develop the life skills they require to live independently in the community. However, there is evidence that the quality of provision offered to vulnerable young people can vary.

Criteria to be housed in different supported accommodation differs; some have quite large age ranges for residents, for example from 16 up to 50, some may be mixed sex while others single sex, many take residents with significant problems such as a history of drug and alcohol abuse or homelessness. Last year Barnardo’s interviewed 23 care leavers about their experience of living independently, including many who have experience of this type of accommodation[1]. Some of these young people (not in Barnardo’s accommodation) gave examples of inappropriate accommodation, which provided them with very little support. They talked about being housed alongside people from a variety of different ages and backgrounds and being pressured into getting involved in drugs and alcohol, as a result of pressure from other residents. Young people spoke about being unable to view the supported accommodation before moving in and being unaware of the other people living there creating anxiety and stress. In some cases, young people were left with very limited support or none at all. Left alone, young people struggled with their problems, not knowing where to go even when things reached crisis point as one young person explained:

“I took an overdose and none of the [support workers] knew.”

However, there are examples of high-quality exempt accommodation, which are tailored to the specific needs of vulnerable young people. Barnardo’s has a long history of providing high quality, semi-independent provision for children in care, care leavers and homeless young people.

Our semi-independent accommodation services vary depending on their commissioning contract, but always provide safe, high-quality accommodation, with a member of trained support staff on site. Barnardo’s services support residents to take part in education, employment and training opportunities, learn life skills for independence, such as cooking or budgeting and offer residents important emotional advice. The accommodation is completely focused on the needs of young people, with all residents being between the ages of 16 and 25.

Research with 15 Barnardo’s young people living in our supported accommodation in March 2020, revealed high quality, semi-independent accommodation provides a valuable, supportive setting for vulnerable young people.

All of the 15 respondents confirmed they ‘liked’ living in our accommodation and all but one respondent confirmed they ‘felt safe always’. Additionally, 75% of respondents stated they were ‘very well supported’ by staff with the other 25% responded feeling ‘quite well’ supported. When we asked them to describe the support they received, one 18-year-old resident responded:

“Help with talking to a children’s social care and employment support worker has been good. I also got some headphones from Barnardo’s as I’m not going out (due to Covid19)”.

Another stated:

“They (staff) are always there when you need them, always have time for you and they give great advice.”

Supporting young people in this way can ensure young people are ready to move on and budget independently in time, as the following case study from one of our supported accommodation services shows:

Is the current model of exempt accommodation financially viable, and does it represent value for money? 

While the exempt accommodation sector has come under some criticism in recent years for being high cost, our own experience of providing this type of housing is that high-quality supported accommodation inevitably requires investment. It would be impossible for us to provide the quality of accommodation that our young people need if this provision did not continue to be exempt from local housing association caps. While the support worker provided to the young people is not paid for through housing benefit, there are other costs related to ensuring the young people have access to high quality and safe accommodation, which are different from those incurred in other areas of the housing market. For example, we use the additional funds provided by housing benefit to provide a concierge service so there is always someone at the front of the building monitoring who is entering, CCTV in communal areas, fire alarms, gardening, furniture and laundry facilities to support the young people. The Covid-19 pandemic has also increased levels of necessary cleaning to help with infection control. This all helps to provide a safe and welcoming environment which is essential if we are going to be able to work with young people to achieve the outcomes we want.

While good quality supportive accommodation necessarily comes at a higher cost, overall we do believe it is possible to look for ways to reduce the costs to the state. However, this requires good collaboration between local partners. In Scotland we have worked with local authorities and other local partners to develop our innovative ‘Gap Homes’ model[2] to deliver high-quality supportive accommodation to young people while reducing some of the initial outlay in doing this.

As rent in these types of accommodation is typically very high, due to the cost of providing appropriate support, it can be difficult for young people who move into low paid work while living with us. While those on housing benefits are able to claim the costs, those in employment often have to fund large amounts of the rent themselves. One young person we interviewed said that because she had found a job, she was expected to pay over three quarters of her wages on rent, while other young people in the same property were claiming Housing Benefit (which covers the costs). We believe the Government should do more to provide support for young people who are working while living in this type of accommodation, so that they are able to move into employment without needing to move on. This can be important for helping young people towards more independent living in the longer term.

How does whether a provider is registered or non-registered, or commissioned or non-commissioned, impact the quality of provision? 

Barnardo’s semi-independent accommodation has primarily been developed as a part of commissioned arrangements with specific local authorities to provide supported accommodation for vulnerable young people in the area. Provision developed using a commissioning framework has many advantages over that developed privately and offered to local authorities on a spot purchase basis. Our provision has been developed with the needs of the local young population in mind, most of the young people who live in our accommodation are direct referrals from the local authority and therefore local to the area, a significant advantage over sending young people out of area to placements far away from their support network.

The arrangement comes with a high degree of oversight. While there is a strong case for providing more oversight to this type of provision (discussed below), the commissioning arrangements means in practice the accommodation is far from ‘unregulated’. Our services have to report regularly on the service they are providing to the commissioning partners including submitting workbooks and receiving regular visits.

The commissioning arrangement also helps ensure a good referral process. Knowledge about what support the service provides means that commissioners are more able to make appropriate referrals in respect of young people for whom they genuinely think the service would be appropriate. Building a close working relationship with the local authority creates the same between the service, social workers and personal advisers. This means that it is often possible to arrange a good transition for the young person into the accommodation, with staff briefed on the young person’s support needs from the outset. The commissioning arrangement encourages a collaborative approach between partners and our provision in the North-West of England has quarterly provider meetings between providers to share thoughts, ideas and good practice amongst the sector.

The commissioning arrangements have been particularly helpful in enabling the service to manage the challenges created by the pandemic. The local authority has been supportive in helping the service gain access to the necessary PPE and testing to help ensure everyone’s safety. They have also facilitated access to vaccines for vulnerable residents who may otherwise be hard for health services to reach.

How should the regulatory oversight of exempt accommodation be organised? 

While we believe that good long-term commissioning relationships between providers and local authorities can provide a way of ensuring effective oversight of this provision, we are concerned that this does not always happen. As highlighted above we have had referrals from young people who have been housed in very poor-quality provision in this sector which has provided very little in the way of appropriate support, and at some points even been unsafe.

Barnardo’s therefore welcomes the introduction of new national standards for this type of accommodation and has welcomed the recent consultation from the Department for Education on what this should involve. (We have also called for those standards to apply to accommodation for care leavers up to the age of 25.) New national standards will provide local authorities with a consistent set of standards to underpin their offer and enable young people to know what they can expect from this type of accommodation, as a minimum standard wherever they are living. The national standards will have the positive impact of creating a new, shared code of practice and safeguarding within the sector, which will better ensure every child and young person is placed in high quality, safe accommodation that meets their needs. The introduction of Ofsted inspection will ensure oversight to the provision and drive poor quality providers to either exit the marketplace or improve their service offer.

However, as we have emphasised to the Department for Education that any inspection regime developed in respect of this accommodation must take into account that the support needed from young people in these services is different from the ‘care’ provided through a children’s home for example. We have supported the Government’s thinking on this matter to date, including commenting on their draft standards, which fit with what providers such as ourselves would consider as standard practice in providing a high-quality service. 

These standards will form the minimum of what services are required to provide. However we would also emphases that even once implemented the standards should not be considered the ‘final word’ in best practice in this area. We would hope that the expectation would be that providers and local authorities continue to work together to further develop practice in this area, including provision which goes beyond the minimum standards – particularly where this is proven to provide better outcomes for young people.

There will be some extra costs associated with compliance with the standards, particularly to smaller providers. It is important that it is communicated to local authorities that they should be anticipating meeting these costs through the funding they provide for support within the accommodation. Otherwise, the standards will provide another upward pressure on the funding from housing benefits.

February 2022