Spotting the signs

Protecting vulnerable children and adults is one of the most challenging and important roles that frontline housing staff perform.

Because they regularly enter people’s homes – for example, to carry out repair work or talk about benefit reform – they are one of the few agencies capable of spotting the early signs of abuse and making sure something is done about it.

Over the past year, Sunderland-based landlord 32,500-home Gentoo has been doing more than most to raise the profile of this vital work – noteably by launching a domestic abuse housing alliance with London-based landlord Peabody and charity Standing Together Against Domestic Violence in a bid to improve the housing sector’s response to the issue.

Vital signs

Gentoo’s community safety and safeguarding service takes the lead on making sure the vital signs of abuse aren’t missed among its own tenants – helping to train staff internally and shouting about the importance of taking action externally.

The team is funded internally and forms part of its community safety objective to make sure residents feel ‘safe and secure in their home and community’.

In order to help landlords gain a better understanding about what they can do to improve their own approach, Inside Housing spoke to Michelle Meldrum, managing director of Gentoo Operations, who leads on the issue for the landlord.

And Gentoo has also opened its database, so readers can see the types of case it is dealing with, who is identifying problems on the ground and what happens as a consequence.

We started by asking Ms Meldrum to spell out exactly why she thinks landlords should be doing more.

Q: Why should landlords be taking more of a lead when it comes to safeguarding?

Michelle Meldrum: ‘It is the right thing to do. We are well placed in communities and in people’s homes. I can’t think of any other agency that is so well placed to be the eyes and ears to spot dangerous living conditions or signs of abuse. So there is the whole social conscience thing.

‘There are business benefits as well. If you can resolve a situation rather than the victim having to terminate a tenancy that is obviously one. Then there are things like [reduced] repairs costs.’

Q: What have you done to make sure staff recognise potential warning signs? What kind of issues are they looking out for, and at what stage would they report a concern?

MM: ‘We have trained all the front-line staff. That is repairs, front-line housing management and so on. We have also trained people in the customer contact centre to recognise those repairs commonly associated with domestic violence, such as holes in internal doors and broken locks on bathroom doors. If there are any three in any 12-month period they will report it to our specialist community safety and safeguarding team.’

Q: What evidence is there that this approach actually has an impact?

MM: ‘As an example, last time we did the refresher training we had 35 referrals come into us that next week. It usually sparks after the training. We are due to do refresher training again in April.’

Q: Do any of the frontline staff have any concerns about this role?

MM: ‘Particularly for the trades guys where there is a bit of scepticism about whether it will come back on them [making a report] they can just tick a little box on their handhelds to say there is something not quite right. This makes it more likely for them to refer in than having to complete a form, make a phone call or send an email.

Q: What action is taken after a report is made?

MM: ‘Our specialist team take a look at it. The referral might not be good quality or there might be duplications. We also check to make sure that we don’t already know the household in that capacity.’

Q: What do you do if the data seems worrying and the household isn’t known to your team? How do you find out more and protect a potentially vulnerable individual at the same time?

MM: ‘We try to make contact and try not to single out the household. We might do a general survey [such as a tenant satisfaction survey] across the street. That just starts the conversation.’

Q: Do all issues get reported to the council – and who makes the decision about what does?

MM: ‘The safeguarding team does an internal filter. Then if we feel it needs to go off [to the council], we know exactly what has gone off from Gentoo as a whole, and we can do a follow-up [to find out what action has been taken as a result].

Q: ‘What are the most common issues raised with the safeguarding team?

MM: ‘We have got more people reporting domestic violence to us than we have ever had. Over the past three years, 60% of our cases have been domestic violence related. That is a growing number. We have a victim support team [to help work with those affected] in partnership with Sunderland’s lead domestic violence and abuse agency Wearside Women in Need. Over the last three years we have supported 143 cases.

Q: What happens if information, say about a vulnerable child, is potentially worrying but doesn’t pass council thresholds for making an official referral to the children’s department?

MM: ‘What we do is we pass on any information that we have got. We have recognised something that may not count as a referral but may be part of a live case. We will still have that conversation with Children’s Services and say “are you aware of this?”.’