Apex Housing - Case Study

Apex Housing Association (Apex) is a non-profit housing association that works to provide support services to tenants and the wider community. Apex provides and maintains almost 7,000 high-quality homes and supports more than 16,000 tenants and residents across Northern Ireland.

Apex is known to have a track record of leading the way in building sustainable communities by delivering quality affordable homes with tailored support and care services. Working to social enterprise principles, Apex employs more than 600 members of staff to deliver support services to tenants and the wider community through their community investment programme.

Apex offers various services to help support their tenants and the wider community to help cater to all housing needs. Some of their main services include:

• General housing needs for families and single people
• Built accommodation for older adults and families with complex needs
• Supported housing for individuals suffering from mental health illness, learning disabilities and addictions
• Housing support services for vulnerable groups under the Supporting People programme
• Support services for tenants and the wider community through their community investment programme
• Community buildings managed by local community groups to provide tenants with a sense of belonging in their community

What are Apex’s community investment aims?

Apex has several aims and objectives relating to its community investment work, which include:

• Provide opportunities for people to participate in making decisions about their community
• Support people to fulfil their vision and aspirations for their community and between communities
• Promote and encourage diversity and good relations in all housing developments, particularly within areas where there is shared housing
• Develop biodiversity and sustainability initiatives within communities

Housing problems are currently one of the top 3 issues we are currently facing in the UK. Both Covid and the cost of living crisis have exacerbated these issues and put individuals under extraordinary amounts of pressure.

The charity Mind has explained how housing and mental health are linked. They have explained how housing problems can affect an individual’s mental health, but equally poorer mental health can make it harder to cope with housing problems.

Apex is always looking for ways to improve its tenancy engagement. They take great pride in forward-thinking, so social prescribing for them was a massive thing to get involved with.

Apex chose to work with Access Elemental Social Prescribing as they have never had a system to record the impact of their hard work and support before. Through being able to record this level of data different dashboards could be made to record, track, monitor, and manage their social prescribing data to identify how their support services have helped individuals and families across Northern Ireland overcome their housing problems to improve their community’s health and wellbeing.

Another main reason why Apex chose to work with Access Elemental Social Prescribing is due to our social prescribing software helps to secure future funding by presenting all the data in one place.   

Robert Cooke, Tenancy Support Worker at Apex explains:

We've been rolling out lots of community investment initiatives since the inception, but we've never had a system where we could record the impact of it and how these initiatives are helping our residents. When we implemented the Tenancy Support Service, it was an opportunity to use Elemental as the pilot scheme to record the data, the journeys that our residents are on, and the impact being made.  The recording of data is really important for us because when you're applying for funding or presenting at senior management or board level, being able to go in with a lot more than a spreadsheet, it's massive.

Since Apex started using Access Elemental Social Prescribing, it has seen how social prescribing can play a significant role in improving lives by creating meaningful connections between residents and their communities.

Our Access Elemental Core module has allowed Apex to have an inbuilt Directory of Services to identify the services available locally to their residents who need support as well as have access to fully flexible, safe, and assured referral pathways which best suit their social prescribing programme.

This in turn, has encouraged more engagement from residents to be more involved in the community, more improvements to their wellbeing, a huge increase in self-referrals, and more data-driven decisions to be made to help individuals best overcome and manage housing problems more effectively.

1. More data-driven decisions

One of the biggest benefits Apex has experienced since using Access Elemental Social Prescribing is being able to make more data-driven decisions. This is because it has enabled its services to be organised more efficiently – everything from cooking programmes to tenancy engagement schemes and even a course on how to write a CV to help people get back into employment quickly.

Here our Directory of Services allows a detailed account of the services available to come up when a tenancy support worker types in an individual’s needs, so each list can be catered to their needs.

What has made this even easier is that our social prescribing system helps filter this further by organising the list by how previous end-users found the service. This way, better data-led decisions can be made to ensure individuals receive and go to services or sessions that best meet their needs. This, in turn, increases their engagement to help them get better outcomes and be better equipped with the tools they need to cope with housing problems both now and in the future, so they no longer feel isolated.

Robert Cooke, Tenancy Support Worker at Apex Housing explains why our Directory of Services has been so beneficial:

The service locator is brilliant too. If I put in somebody's details, it gives a detailed account of the services within that area and what's relevant.  It’ll also put them on a ‘how they're rated’ sort of system by people who've used them in the past, giving you a good idea of what you're sending that person for and ensuring it’s relevant.

2. Increase in referrals

Another benefit which Apex has experienced since using our social prescribing platform is the massive increase in referrals including self-referrals. In the last 12 months alone Apex Housing has received over 130 referrals.

Most housing associations are more likely to be aware of the reasons for housing problems and homelessness may not always be the first reason that an individual states. This discovery can arguably be a major part of someone’s social prescribing journey.

When adopting the social prescribing model into the housing sector it can be difficult to get everyone involved so no needs are left unmet. Through Apex using Access Elemental it can offer local communities all around Northern Ireland the option to self-refer or self-serve using our platform to get to the root cause of their housing problems and get a better sense of belonging within their community.

Housing problems are not going away, so having multiple options for individuals to be referred to social prescribing is vital so they can attend programmes and services that matter to them. Every social prescribing journey is different, even more so when it is being adopted in the housing sector.

Having easy and efficient referral processes, including self-referral processes, helps individuals get their support they quickly. This has been incredibly useful for Apex as even though the demand keeps building it is still managed effectively and no one is left without the support they need.

The self-referral thing to me was one of the things that we genuinely thought ‘let's see what this is to see where we go forward with it’.  However, from day one it just rolled and rolled and rolled and it's been massive now where we're seeing sisters and brothers and family members and friends referring people through to us.

Robert Cooke, Tenancy Support Worker, Apex

3. Improvements to wellbeing in the community

One of the last main benefits for Apex is being able to record and track the impact they have been making across Northern Ireland since they started using Access Elemental.

I'm using it as my toy in the office, to show off all my graphs and details. It's an amazing tool where you can go in and some of the dashboards on it are just so specific.

Robert Cooke, Tenancy Support Worker at Apex

The diagram below shows some of their top achievements.

Apex Housing Association has found using our social prescribing software extremely beneficial, helping to track and monitor the impact its services are having across Northern Ireland.

We cannot wait to help Apex be able to use its data even further to be better prepared for the future and be more evaluative of what services have worked best for which targeted groups. The amount of cases coming through and needing support will continue to rise as the pressures from the cost-of-living crisis continue. We are looking forward to seeing how Apex can progress further to develop even more sustainable support services to cater to every house need.

At Access Elemental Social Prescribing we know how housing pressures can impact an individual’s health and wellbeing and how the risk of homelessness is continuing to build. Through investing in digital social prescribing platforms you can help your local community add social value back so every individual feels a sense of belonging and no longer feels isolated or like a failure.

For more information on how social prescribing can help in housing download our housing guide today.

Contact us and see first-hand how our social prescribing system can adapt to your service to help you get the best outcomes, increase engagement, and most importantly ensure individuals can manage their housing problems better both now and in the future.