News

Neighbours from hell and their close companions in Hades, street beggars, are rarely far from the tabloid front pages. The Sun has asked its readers to name and shame "Britain's worst yob", while Manchester Council also made headlines with the announcement that it was considering making school attendance a condition of families' council housing. For those persistently failing to ensure their children attend school, eviction could follow.

The term "antisocial behaviour" has come to cover "57 varieties" of nuisance neighbours, beggars, street yobs, gum droppers and others inhabiting that ill-defined territory between public nuisance and outright lawlessness. Much of this behaviour occurs in areas where most people live in social housing, placing local authorities and housing associations in the front line of government action against antisocial behaviour.

Ever since Tony Blair vowed to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime in the 1990s, the Labour Party has shown a growing interest in antisocial behaviour. Following the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which developed the system of antisocial behaviour orders, there has been a steady flow of policy announcements and high-profile speeches.

The Antisocial Behaviour Act 2003 gives social housing providers sweeping powers to seek injunctions on the grounds of antisocial behaviour, and allows them to ask the courts to demote a tenancy. Both these measures make it easier to gain possession of a property and evict the tenants.

Last October, Blair and home secretary David Blunkett launched a government action plan called Together, Tackling Antisocial Behaviour. Developed by the Home Office Antisocial Behaviour Unit, it laid out a range of initiatives:

• Targeting of 450 families involved in persistent antisocial behaviour.
• Nuisance neighbourhood panels to nominate nuisance households and develop solutions.
• Parenting programmes for the parents of children at risk of committing antisocial behaviour.
• Trailblazer programmes to address begging in five key areas, and the development of a criminal response to begging.

To deliver this agenda, housing agencies are more readily resorting to eviction, boosting the numbers of families in temporary accommodation. This year, the media reported the case of a 10-year-old boy who had attempted suicide seven times after spending two years in bed and breakfast accommodation. His family of nine had been evicted from social housing because of the behaviour of the boy's brothers. Their solicitor argued that: "Eviction could have been prevented if a little work had been done earlier on. The crux is that housing and social services do not work well together."

As a consequence of such cases, social workers are recognising that they are at loggerheads with housing because of the latter's role as enforcer. Children and young people at risk of harm can be disruptive, disengaged and involved in antisocial behaviour. The approach of housing agencies threatens to undermine the government's ambitions to address child protection, poverty, health and education inequalities as linked issues.

Competing policy strands within government - and the way these are played out at a local level - exacerbate this problem. We see a Department for Education and Skills strand, with a message around joint working, information-sharing and stronger lines of accountability, based on a local authority duty to act as corporate parent to children at risk. Then there's the Home Office strand, which classifies vulnerable young people as offenders rather than children at risk and facilitates their exclusion from social housing. As Mary Riddell noted in the Observer on 5 October 2003, the green paper could be retitled Every Child Matters As Long As They Behave Themselves.

Unfortunately, any challenge to the government agenda on antisocial behaviour may lead to personal attacks rather than informed debate. As Blunkett made clear, "naivety" may lead people to subscribe to the "liberal garbage" of trying to "understand the yob before the plight of victims". To discourage such thoughts, he informed reluctant housing managers to "stop the nuisance or search for a new career".

Against this background of increasing pressure to evict families engaged in antisocial behaviour, our research set out to explore how housing responses to antisocial behaviour have affected social work practice. Taking an English local authority as a subject, we interviewed social work professionals including an assistant director, team leaders, front-line social workers and the head of the local youth offending team, and a senior manager in children's charity NCH.We use case studies to outline our findings and illustrate how housing responses to antisocial behaviour negatively affect social work practice with vulnerable children and their families.

We found a range of perspectives among social work staff, depending on seniority and frequency of contact with housing. We developed case studies that illustrate the key issues for social workers. An intake team manager outlined several cases:

Family 1: A woman (with a number of children in care) was evicted for antisocial behaviour. The social workers feel the family can be reunited but not until rehousing takes place. She is now pregnant, but unless stable housing can be found, her rehabilitation and that of her children is under threat. Despite negotiations with housing, no progress has been made.

Family 2: Social workers are working with a man and his toddler son living in an unsuitable hostel for homeless people. The housing association will not rehouse them because of antisocial behaviour and rent arrears. The poor-quality, private sector accommodation that has been found is undermining the support social workers can offer.

Family 3: The team received a call from court that a family with no previous contact with social services was being evicted because of the state of their garden and noise nuisance. Presented with photographic evidence on the state of the house, the judge decided the children were at risk and suggested an emergency protection order should be sought. Social workers rushed to court and persuaded the judge that this was unusual and a full assessment was needed. Once this was complete, social workers felt there was no risk and that they didn't have to work with the family. But the eviction still went ahead.

Several respondents noted that stock transfer from local authorities to housing associations had led to an increase in evictions, and an unwillingness to take risks with young people and families with high support needs. Observing that housing providers now aim to provide housing for "the majority" and not for challenging nuisances, and that families referred to housing providers by social services were rarely offered homes, one respondent suggested the local housing waiting list should be renamed the "f*** off scheme".

The lack of communication between housing and social services was also lamented. Local housing providers are evicting more and more people, but do not notify social services when they do. For example, a vulnerable family with a new baby and two older children (one of whom was looked after) were evicted on a Friday afternoon. When social workers complained, they were told housing had no responsibility to inform social services.

Additionally, housing workers may make decisions that undermine social work attempts to engage with families, even when those attempts are starting to succeed. For example, a family where the parents had been imprisoned for drug offences and had other children being looked after wanted to return to the area to establish better contact with their children. Housing providers refused to rehouse them.

In another case, a separated family with four children being looked after were co-operating with plans to rehabilitate the children with their mother. This was significantly impeded when she was evicted for the state of her garden.

One team leader provided a rationale for the different perspective between housing and social work: "Social work aims to give people optimal chances, whereas housing just provides accommodation. Social work has to continually fight its corner and make housing officials understand the issues and complexities."

He pointed to a family with five children "one of whom is the most disturbed I have ever met - and they have moved 17 times within a few years. Housing is an essential part of providing a good children and families social work service".

In another case, a lone mother with four children applied for a housing transfer to make a fresh start in a new area. She was refused because the oldest child had previously been served with an antisocial behaviour order - a decision that adversely affected all the children.

"Housing put up barriers and doesn't share our perspective on vulnerable people," said one social worker. Once a family has been evicted, housing associations are reluctant to rehouse them, which can make it difficult to return a child home from care. The same social worker added:"Eviction makes it harder for people to be good parents, and creates real difficulties for the children. No other department in the local authority seems to care about this."

Eviction pushes problems "downstream", where social services must intervene. There was concern about the fissure developing between supportive social work practice and the increasingly punitive nature of housing management. A senior manager sympathised with housing agencies, observing that there was tremendous pressure to deliver results within a growing culture of zero tolerance.

But a dissenting voice was provided by another senior manager who argued that practice would have to change in the light of this government's distaste for a liberal social work agenda. He predicted there would be a developing synergy around early intervention, an assertive style of practice and a willingness to remove children at risk.

Our research does not yield firm conclusions, but it does show that housing is increasingly focusing on crime, disorder and community sustainability while social workers and social services remain committed to meeting individual needs and working with the whole family.

The new children's legislation offers an opportunity to consider the needs of vulnerable children holistically. Whether the government will address actions that undermine this objective remains to be seen.

Frances Young is senior lecturer in social work, department of social work, University of Central Lancashire; Annie Huntington is principal lecturer in social work, department of social work, University of Central Lancashire; and Mark Foord was lecturer in housing studies, Salford University housing and urban studies unit.

For further details please contact: Frances Young, Department of Social Work, University of Central Lancashire, The Harrington Building, Preston PR1 2HE. Telephone 01772 20120.