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What stops tenants working?

Thames Valley staff have been speaking to tenants about barriers to work. Chief executive Geeta Nanda explains more

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It might be Theresa May’s phrase of the moment, but “strong and stable” could easily have been pilfered from any housing association mission statement written in the past decade.

We’ve known for a long time that building great homes isn’t enough; to create stable homes, stable communities and thus a stable society, we also have to invest in the people who live in them, and do so for the long haul.

“Housing associations have an urgent responsibility to step in to do what we can to help our residents into work.”

With the challenges that the next couple of years might impose on our residents and society at large – welfare changes like the shared accommodation rate, and an economic downturn after Brexit – what role do modern housing associations have to play and what is the future of community investment?

At Thames Valley Housing, we’ve started trying to answer this question by talking to our residents about what stops them working.

Some things were obvious, like being unsure how to write a CV.

But words that came up most frequently in those interview transcripts were perhaps surprising and, in some cases, upsetting: depression, motivation, health, family, weight and possibly most poignantly, simply “help”. As one resident put it, “I didn’t know help was out there. I’ve been in a rut for 10 years and thought I’d stay there”.

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Helping staff manage their own finances – Family Mosaic is now offering financial advice to its own staff.

What was immediately clear was that not only were the issues widespread, but many residents faced multiple problems at one time. These residents were also often well educated, but a convergence of factors had caused them to leave the workplace and feel unable to return.

In response, we set up a pilot project called Level Up in Hounslow, west London this January.

It’s an initiative that looks to nurture well-being, not just traditional ‘employability skills’. It gives residents a chance to address a complex range of factors that can affect their ability to get a job, whether that’s negative self-talk, issues with physical and mental well-being, low confidence and self-esteem, money management, or nutrition and fitness.

They have an appointed coach throughout the programme, and work together in groups based on their needs.

“A significant proportion weren’t in rent arrears.”

The feedback so far has been very positive, with residents telling us they’re exercising more, getting out of the house (in some cases, for the first time in years) and regaining self-confidence lost long ago. The final proof will be in what career paths they take in the coming months, but so far we have had a level of engagement and change of attitude in these residents that we’ve not witnessed for a long time. Round two of the pilot has just started.

A second surprise for us was that a significant proportion of participants weren’t in rent arrears and so weren’t part of the group we would usually target automatically for support. So if their getting in to work doesn’t affect our bottom line, does that mean we shouldn’t support them?

The Royal College of Nursing reported recently that they are starting to haemorrhage foreign staff.

This year 62% more EU workers left the NHS than the previous year, and registrations of new nurses from the EU has dropped 92% since the referendum in June 2016 There are an estimated 57,000 EU nationals working in the NHS, with 20,000 of those alone being nurses.

Bursaries for trainee nurses in the UK were cut in 2016, so it’s clear we aren’t growing our own talent, and a huge chasm is opening up. 

Housing associations have an urgent responsibility to step in as part of a broader social contract to do what we can to help our residents into work and improve their overall well-being, and not just to hit our arrears targets.

The pool of talent that will bridge that huge potential skills gap in the NHS (as just one example) is in our homes and communities. But they won’t get there without our support.

Geeta Nanda, chief executive, Thames Valley Housing

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