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Home & Neighbourhood
Evidence & Policy
See evidence & policy for other inclusive practices and domains
A study of mental health issues arising in social housing
This is the report of a study of the views and experiences of frontline housing staff in working with tenants with mental health problems. The study originated as part of the mental health, housing and social inclusion partnership programme developed originally by NIMHE's North East, Yorks and Humber Regional Development Centre.
With NIMHE itself, this work is now incorporated in that of the broader Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP), and the National Social Inclusion Programme.
Download as a PDF file:
Mental health is an issue that the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has considered in many of its previous reports, particularly those relating to family breakdown, criminal justice (courts and sentencing and prison reform), children in care and street gangs.
Its work focusing on the poorest communities has highlighted time and again the extremely high prevalence of mental ill-health and the compounding effect that it has on people and families already battling to live amongst challenging circumstances.
This review was undertaken so that they could investigate precisely why this is the case and found that the ‘pathways to poverty’ that are the focus of its work, are heavily implicated in the development of poor mental health.
The evidence base on housing support services for people with a mental health problem is less well developed than it could be. One consequence of the limitations with current evidence is that it is not clear to clinicians and health service commissioners how housing support services can potentially support and complement the work of the NHS and deliver important health outcomes.
This review was designed to identify outcome measures that can be used to examine the effectiveness of housing related support for people with mental health problems. The main objective of the review was to review effectiveness measures and discuss the development of an evaluation methodology that would:
- be of sufficient robustness to stand up to the scrutiny of clinicians, social care and housing related support professionals and local and central government;
- be both practical and cost effective to deploy in research that will often only have restricted resources available;
- clearly and unambiguously demonstrate the extent to which housing related support services can have beneficial effects on the wellbeing of people with mental health problems.
From the National Mental Health Development Unit, a short document outlining key facts and figures on Mental Health and Housing.
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A review of reviews of interventions for improving health
This briefing (a review of reviews) aims to:
- Identify all relevant systematic reviews, syntheses,meta-analyses and review-level papers on public health interventions relating to housing
- Review these papers and highlight what housing related interventions work to promote health for all population groups, but with particular reference to disadvantaged and vulnerable groups
- Identify cost-effectiveness data for housing-related interventions to promote health for all population groups
- Highlight any gaps in the evidence and provide recommendations for future research.
This briefing is intended to inform policy and decision makers, NHS providers, housing officials, public health physicians and other public health practitioners in the widest sense.
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Produced by the SCIE, this "at a glance" briefing examines the implications of the personalisation agenda for managers of residential care homes.
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Making the Connections: Transport and Social Exclusion
In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that transport problems can be a significant barrier to social inclusion. During the Social Exclusion Unit’s (SEU) work on neighbourhood renewal, transport problems were frequently highlighted as important barriers to improving work, learning and health outcomes in deprived areas.
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Increasing numbers of young homeless people with mental health problems are not getting adequate support because services rarely work together to provide the necessary help.
This report from the Mental Health Foundation calls for joined up commissioning of integrated services across sectors, to speed up access to specialist mental health and drug and alcohol services when needed by young people.
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From the Nuffield Trust, a study of the Canadian experience of managing health reform in a time of austerity suggests that this requires skilful political leadership and honesty with the public about the need for cuts.
Neighbouring now and in the past
This think-piece aims to investigate the role of neighbouring in contemporary Britain, and to provide a clear and informed overview of a much-debated area.
By neighbouring, we mean social relations between people living in close proximity; neighbourliness is used specifically to discuss positive neighbouring relations.
The think-piece considers the current state of play by reviewing existing literature on these themes and sets out some key considerations for further work.
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Is There a Formula for Happy Communities?
The Local Wellbeing Project is a unique, three-year initiative to explore how local government can practically improve the happiness and wellbeing of their
citizens.
This report has been undertaken as part of the neighbourhood and community empowerment strand, which aims to accelerate understanding of how local
authorities can, through their community engagement and neighbourhood working practices, increase the wellbeing of their residents.
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An Evaluation of Advance's Home Ownership Scheme
Advance has extensive experience of providing housing and support to vulnerable people, including shared ownership to people with learning disabilities.
The Own Home scheme was established to give people with mental health problems security of tenure, choice and support in housing options via shared ownership.
This study focuses on the experience and views of people involved in the ‘Own Home' pilot scheme of shared home ownership for people with mental health needs.
Evaluation as a PDF file and Advance's website:
Mental Health, Learning & Skills and Housing
The very latest policy on mental health and housing is encapsulated in a Public Service Agreement (PSA). The papers attached here are a commentary on PSA 16.
The Home and Neighbourhood Network of Develop will be discussing PSA 16, developing a local understanding and lobbying for mental health as a local priority during 2008.
Resources and links:
Improving Outcomes for Individuals and Communities
Localising community services at the same time as reducing budgets is testing the public sector. Having more responsibility and less resource is an undesirable state of affairs and is very demanding on professionals who are facing uncertain times.
This paper takes an optimistic view of what could be achieved. It looks at ways in which housing, social care and other professionals might reorientate and reorganise their programmes in the light of localism and the expectation of a ‘bigger society’.
It supports the opinion that co-production, which shares many of the principles of personalisation, is a credible model for public service reform across many sectors.
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