Can social prescribing help with housing?

Housing is one of the wider social determinants of health that social prescribers or social prescribing link workers try to help individuals overcome. More housing associations are seeing social prescribing playing a significant role in improving lives by creating connections between residents and their communities.

For social prescribers to connect residents within their communities, those communities must tackle the health inequalities they are experiencing. The collaborative work between local authorities, housing associations, and social prescribers will allow key housing issues and problems impacting people’s mental health to be identified and decisions to be made in how to overcome them. 

A key thing to remember is that even people with the biggest support networks could be suffering. Since Covid-19 social isolation has become one of the biggest contemporary issues for people of all ages and backgrounds. The cost of living crisis and inflation has caused many people to worry how they will pay their bills. An IPSOS survey in June 2022 found that 47% of respondents were worried about their ability to pay their rent. This has increased by over 20% in the last two years post Covid. Peabody’s report identified that 80% of respondents were restricting their use of heating, 42% were spending less on food shopping, and 41% were doing both just to make ends meet.

Here is where social prescribers are crucial in helping individuals reconnect with their community and learn the importance of communicating their problems to find solutions. Social prescribing link workers understand that events can happen in life that are out of our control, especially with housing, and they are fully trained to help individuals be referred to the most appropriate help and support when needed.

All homes should be: high quality, sustainable, accessible to everyone’s needs, safe, secure, and connected to the community. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

Factors such as stress, loneliness, money problems, and insecure housing can affect 30-55% of our health outcomes. Housing problems in particular can cause a significant decline in someone’s mental health and the unpredictably of life means it can happen to anyone at any time. Here are just some of the examples from the mental health charity; Mind, of how housing problems can impact anyone's mental health:

• Living in an unsafe area – this can cause constant stress and anxiety leading to sleeping problems further impacting both mental and physical health
• Relationship problems – when relationships break down emotions are high and the worry of sorting out living arrangements can negatively impact someone’s mental health further
• Living in a noisy area – if sleeping conditions are noisy or chaotic you could become sleep deprived and the stress of not sleeping can also keep you awake
• Money problems – this could mean you will struggle or are struggling to pay rent or your mortgage and at more risk of being evicted or losing your house creating huge stress
• Loneliness- sudden and frequent moves from place to place can affect your self-esteem making it more difficult to connect to new communities
• Poor housing – Examples of poor housing include a lack of facilities, leaks, damp and mould. In the last 5 years Shelter found that 1 in 20 adults visited their GP with mental health issues related to poor housing.
• Environmental issues – your house or flat having damp, mould or dirt can make you physically ill as well as impacting your mental health and having a landlord or a housing association that does not help resolve your issues can escalate these problems further
• Overcrowding – reports recording the impacts of overcrowding on mental health have shown that 30% of people suffered with psychological distress and depression.
• Housing Shortages – Not being able to find somewhere to live can cause extreme anxiety, stress, depression, and feeling like a failure. By the end of September 2021 nearly 100,00 households were in temporary accommodation, including over 120,000 children, and these numbers continue to rise
  
  

Social prescribers can help with housing in many ways, they can help tenants suffering with social isolation as well as landlords in developing programmes tailored to the needs of their community.

One key issue social prescribing can help with is the increase of anti-social behaviour in housing estates. It can make someone feel unsafe within their own home and scared to leave. Social prescribing can offer support to those feeling vulnerable and ensure they do not feel alone. Using social prescribing can offer support to both landlords and tenants by delivering a service that meets their needs and builds the capacity of social housing staff so residents who need support have it readily available.

Social prescribing allows individuals that are suffering with housing problems and  decreasing mental health and wellbeing to be re-connected into their local community. Social prescribing adds social value back into individuals lives by not only promoting better wellbeing, it provides better access to the facilities an individual may require such as: health, education, and greener spaces.

Digital social prescribing is crucial here to reach out to more residents quickly and easily, especially when residents could initially feel nervous or reluctant to get involved. Once this initial barrier is overcome, residents can benefit in a variety of ways:

• Tenants can be more engaged within their community and local events
• Social prescribing programmes can be developed to suit their needs and be planned around individuals’ confidence levels so no one feels forced to do anything just encouraged
• It allows tenants to feel safer in their homes and more confident in themselves
• Tenants will learn what coping strategies work best for them when a stressful event occurs

Here is a video that explains how social prescribing in housing helps Peter be supported in his community, gain financial advice and support, as well as guidance in how to reconnect with his community so he no longer feels isolated. 

1. DIY Classes

The idea of using DIY classes as an social prescribing intervention not only can bring potentially isolated individuals suffering with similar issues together, but it teaches new skills and the importance of taking pride in where they live to make changes to feel happier in their home.

2. Budgeting and Welfare Advice

Welfare officers offer support by providing benefits and budgeting advice to help individuals save money. Welfare officers can then signpost individuals to parenting organisations to people who would like further assistance and want to learn more skills surrounding budgeting.

3. Allotments

Signposting individuals to an allotment project is a great way to get individuals suffering with mental health problems outside. Green social prescribing is a great way to connect people together in more garden-based activities.

This is also a great way for individuals who do not have their own gardens to enjoy green spaces, learn skills, grow their own produce, and make new friendships.

4. Community Supermarkets

For some individuals community supermarkets are also really beneficial. Community supermarkets, similar to food banks, help individuals on their journey out of food poverty.

The Trussell Trust donated over 2.1 million food parcels between April 2021 and March 2022 and these numbers continue to rise.

Interventions like food banks and community supermarkets can massively help individuals dealing with housing problems as it can take away some of the pressure to avoid any further decline on someone’s mental health.

The government are committed to increasing access to mental health services. They stated in their long term plan, an additional £2.3 billion will be invested into mental health services by 2023/2024. Currently 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem of some kind each year, so solutions and more access to mental health services are vital in helping individuals improve and manage their mental health.

In November 2020 the Charter for Social Housing, known as the social housing white paper, highlighted the 7 pillars which residents should be provided with:

1. Safe in your own home
2. Know how your landlord is performing
3. To have your complaints dealt with promptly and fairly
4. To be treated with respect
5. To have your voice heard by your landlord
6. To have a good quality home and neighbourhood to live in
7. To be supported to take your first step to ownership

Social prescribers are instrumental in ensuring the 7 pillars are being followed. The rapport they build and establish with their clients makes clients trust them and know social prescribers can help and refer them to whatever support they need.

When any of the 7 pillars are not being followed social prescribing link workers can resolve issues by ensuring clients are referred to the most appropriate support needed. Social prescribers can also help landlords by providing methods and guidance for best practice in following the 7 pillars to ensure they have happy and healthy residents both mentally and physically.

A lot evidence for social prescribing helping with housing have been from pilots, however the data from these pilots have been promising.

Housing Executive and Spring Social Prescribing:

Both the Housing Executive and Spring Social Prescribing collaborated together to support vulnerable tenants with their health and wellbeing. Over £25,000 was invested by the Housing Executive as part of the organisations’ homelessness prevention work. Over 50 local tenants were helped at the initial start of the programme, and this was vital as the pandemic hit.

Caroline Connor, the Assistant Director in the Housing Executive’s housing services explained

“Social prescribing has been a welcome boost for our tenants in the Derry city and Strabane council area…As a landlord we recognise that many different services help tenants maintain their tenancies and enable them to enjoy their homes.”

Poplar HARCA and Access Elemental Social Prescribing:

Poplar HARCA is an award- winning Housing and regeneration community association in East London. They own and manage over 9000 homes with partners and are leading a £2.5 billion place-shaping programme including new homes, education, healthcare facilities and much more. Poplar HARCA working with Access Elemental Social Prescribing has allowed a holistic approach, making their refocus on improving the health and wellbeing of local people in the area easier, by providing software that helps measure and record outcomes more efficiently.

Babu Bhattacherjee, the Director of Communities and Neighbourhoods at Poplar HARCA explains:

“ We are now planning to refocus a significant amount of our resources towards the health and well-being of local people and we have put together an exciting cross-sector partnership to make that happen. A holistic approach will undoubtedly be needed and Access Elemental will not only make the process significantly more efficient, it will also give us the evidence needed to prove that we’re making a real difference.”

At Access Elemental Social Prescribing, we know that mental health and housing are linked and sometimes it improves our mental health and we get excited about our futures, but more often than not it can cause a decline in our mental health. Not all landlords and housing associations make life easy and social prescribing can help tenants, landlords, and housing associations overcome problems and be more connected within their society.

Discover our social prescribing software and learn how we have helped other housing associations and communities tackle health inequalities to ensure tenants problems and complaints are dealt with quickly and efficiently to avoid causing a decline in anyone’s mental health.

Learn how to implement social prescribing successfully by downloading our social prescribing guide and see how you can add social value and reconnect your local community back together, to improve the mental health and wellbeing of your local area.

We know and understand the various housing problems that are impacting individuals differently on a daily basis and we want to help local authorities be able to provide the best housing support services possible to help improve individuals mental health and wellbeing, as well as limit the need to seek temporary accommodation or ever seek it again. Discover how by downloading our housing support guide today where we explain how we are helping making housing more permanent.