Funding reform ‘must not hurt clients’

Proposed pilots on a new funding system for Supporting People must ensure the reform does not penalise the most vulnerable clients, the National Housing Federation has said.

The housing association umbrella body made the call after the government’s strategy on Supporting People said it would test the merits of funding housing support through local area agreements in 2008-9, with a view to implementing a prior pledge to roll this out across England in April 2009.

Under LAAs, councils and their partners are freed up to pool funding streams in pursuit of targets agreed with government, which would effectively remove the ring-fence around Supporting People.

The federation’s assistant director of neighbourhoods, Helen Williams, said the risk with LAAs was that not all current Supporting People funding would reach the supported housing sector and whether “if at all, it serves the most vulnerable people in our society”.

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 Mithran Samuel