Social Work and Housing
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PRACTICAL SOCIAL WORK Series Editor: Jo Campling IBA5Wl Editorial Advisory Board: Robert Adams, Terry Bamford, Charles Barker, Lena Dominelli, Malcolm Payne, Michael Preston-Shoot, Daphne Statham and Jane Tunstill Social work is at an important stage in its development. All professions must be responsive to changing social and economic conditions if they are to meet the needs of those they serve. This series focuses on sound practice and the specific contribution which social workers can make to the well-being of our society. The British Association of Social Workers has always been conscious of its role in setting guidelines for practice and in seeking to raise professional standards. The conception of the Practical Social Work series arose from a survey of BASW members to discover where they, the practitioners in social work, felt there was the most need for new literature. The response was overwhelming and enthusiastic, and the result is a carefully planned, coherent series of books. The emphasis is firmly on practice set in a theoretical framework. The books will inform, stimulate and promote discussion, thus adding to the further development of skills and high professional standards. All the authors are practitioners and teachers of social work representing a wide variety of experience. JO CAMPLING A list of published titles in this series follows overleaf PRACTICAL SOCIAL WORK Self Help, Social Work and Child Sexual Abuse Empowerment Danya Glaser and Stephen Frosh Robert Adams Computers in Social Work Social Work and Mental Handicap Bryan Glastonbury David Anderson Working with Families Beyond Casework Gill Gorell Barnes James G, Barber Women and Social Work: Towards a Practising Social Work Law Woman-centred Practice Suzy Braye and Michael Preston-Shoot Jalna Hanmer and Daphne Statham Citizen Involvement Youth Work Peter Beresford and Suzy Croft Tony Jeffs and Mark Smith (eds) Social Workers at Risk Problems of Childhood and Adolescence Robert Brown, Stanley Bute Michael Kerfoot and Alan Butler and Peter Ford Social Work with Old People Social Work and Mental Illness Mary Marshall Alan Butler and Colin Pritchard Applied Psychology for Social Workers Social Work and Europe Paula Nicolson and Rowan Bayne Crescy Cannan, Lynne Berry and Karen Lyons Crisis Intervention in Social Services Kieran O'Hagan Residential Work Roger Clough Social Work with Disabled People Social Work and Child Abuse Michael Oliver David M. Cooper and David Ball Separation, Divorce and Families Management in Social Work Lisa Parkinson Veronica Coulshed Social Care in the Community Social Work Practice: An Introduction Malcolm Payne Veronica Coulshed Working in Teams Social Work and Local Politics Malcolm Payne Paul Daniel and John Wheeler Working with Young Offenders Sociology in Social Work Practice John Pitts Peter R. Day Effective Groupwork Anti-Racist Social Work: A Challenge Michael Preston-Shoot for White Practitioners and Educators Adoption and Fostering: Why and How Lena Dominelli Carole R. Smith Working with Abused Children Celia Doyle Social Work with the Dying and Bereaved Applied Research for Better Practice Carole R. Smith Angela Everitt, Pauline Hardiker, Jane Littlewood and Audrey Mullender Child Care and the Courts Carole R. Smith, Mary T. Lane Welfare Rights Work in Social Services and Terry Walsh Geoff Fimister Social Work and Housing Student Supervision in Social Work Gill Stewart and John Stewart Kathy Ford and Alan Jones Working with Rural Communities Anti-Discriminatory Practice David Francis and Paul Henderson Neil Thompson Children, their Families and the Law Community Work Michael D. A. Freeman Alan Twelvetrees Family Work with Elderly People Working with Offenders Alison Froggatt Hilary Walker and Bill Beaumont (eds) Social Work and Housing Gill Stewart and John Stewart M MACMILLAN © British Association of Social Workers 1993 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1993 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-44667-6 ISBN 978-1-349-22394-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22394-7 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Copy-edited and typeset by Povey-Edmondson Okehampton and Rochdale, England Series Standing Order (Practical Social Work) If you would like to receive future titles in this series as they are published, you can make use of our standing order facility. To place a standing order please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address and the name of the series. Please state with which title you wish to begin your standing order. (If you live outside the UK we may not have the rights for your area, in which case we will forward your order to the publisher concerned.) Standing Order Service, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 2XS, England Contents Acknowledgements vii 1 A Social Work Approach to Housing 1 Housing rights? 2 Housing need 5 The housing problem 8 Clients' housing problems 15 Understanding and responding to clients' circumstances 21 2 Moving to Independence: Leaving Home, Leaving Institutions 27 Policy contexts 28 Working with young people and their parents 32 Leaving care 35 Leaving custody 40 Leaving hospital 43 The single homeless 47 Giving and taking help 51 3 Relationship Breakdown 54 Wanting out 57 The woman leaves 61 The man leaves 63 Interim arrangements 72 4 Homeless Families 76 Social work's historical involvement 76 Preventing homelessness 80 Temporary accommodation 86 Inter-agency relations 91 v VI Contents 5 Difficult Estates 95 Difficult to let 95 Difficult to live in 101 Social work concerns 106 What social workers do 109 6 III Health, Old Age and Housing 122 Cause of ill health? 122 Old people at home 124 Housing or care problem? 126 Special schemes 129 Resources, rights and realities 132 Expectations 140 7 The Housing Problem and Social Work 145 Resource List 148 Bibliography 155 Index 176 Acknowledgements We are grateful to Mary Brailey, Jan Owens and Moira Peelo for commenting on earlier drafts of certain chapters. Also we particularly wish to thank all those social workers whom we interviewed, for allowing us to share their insights into the housing problems faced by clients. GILL STEWART JOHN STEWART VII 1 A Social Work Approach to Housing During the 1980s three main priorItles were developed in policies for social work. 'Child protection' is now the clearer focus for work with children and families. 'Community care' is associated with the closure of long-stay hospitals and preventing the admission to residential care of elderly people and others with disabilities. Supervising 'punishment in the community' is the new emphasis for probation work. Within those policy areas, social workers engage with clients' asso ciated housing problems, which also have their separate policy contexts. In this book we analyse the various policies and their operation in practice, and discuss ways of negotiating some resolution of the resulting conflicts. The clients of social workers, whatever the agency - social services or probation - are almost all poor. Nearly all of them live on means-tested benefits. The majority of clients are also council tenants; if they are not, it is usually because they are without independent housing at all, rather than being home owners. Social services clients differ from probation clients on three significant demographic features. Probation clients are more likely to be male, young and single, although women, often with children, are an increasing proportion of the caseload. Given the foci of social work and given the general characteristics of the clients, problems with accommodation seem inevitable. We will be considering the extent to which social workers can become involved with the housing pro blems of their clients effectively, within mainstream practice. 1 2 Social Work and Housing First, we should take heart that work in this notoriously complex area can be effective. Social workers usually engage with housing problems at an individual level but, particularly when there is no immediate practical solution in sight, it can make more sense to work with groups of people who are similarly affected. That is why housing issues have long been a central focus for community work in this country (Lees & Mayo, 1984, ch. 6; Short, 1982, pp. 5-11), and some great housing victories have been won by local people with the support of community workers, often over a long period. Famous struggles of the past in Notting Hill, Salford, Islington and Glasgow were associated with clearance and redevelopment of an area of old private housing and the rehousing of its residents by the council (O'Malley, 1977; no comparable source on the S99 victory in Salford; Baine, 1975; Jacobs, 1976). Large scale redevelopment ended practically everywhere during the seventies. More recently, conditions in the new estates that were built under slum clearance pro grammes are likely to be the problem, and the council as landlord is the target for pressure (Bryant & Bryant, 1982). The situation may be different but the methods of working for change are basically the same (as elaborated in chapter 5). Reflecting on the successful struggles of the past may encourage those already committed. But in order to counter possibly negative attitudes amongst social workers in general, we need to develop a social work approach to housing.