Supporting People ‘shakes the sector’

Supporting People has brought much-needed accountability into a
supported housing sector that has had it easy for too long, the
trustee of a London homelessness charity has claimed.

Before the funding programme was introduced monitoring of supported
housing was inadequate and many services were not providing value,
according to Philip Burke.

Housing providers English Churches Housing Group and Carr-Gomm told
a conference (news, page 12, 5 May) that the sector should campaign
against the bureaucracy that accompanies the programme.

But Burke said although the administration of the system needed
fine tuning, monitoring was often inadequate and organisations had
to be accountable for the way they spent taxpayers’ money.

He said: “Supporting People has shaken the whole homelessness
sector, particularly supported housing, and it has made all of us
far more accountable than we were in the past. In the past no-one
was accountable and the money just kept on coming.”

Sarah Davis, the Chartered Institute of Housing’s policy officer,
said: “The principles behind Supporting People were extremely
good.

“These were to bring into the field some kind of consistent quality
assessment and continuous quality improvement drivers, which are
always good for service users.”