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Plan to conduct a national survey of housing support services
The Housing Support Enabling Unit is conduction a national survey of housing support services to find out:
- If individual local authorities in Scotland pay the full cost of the housing support services they commission
- If the amounts of housing support local authorities purchase changes as the new funding arrangements take effect.
- If the number of small packages of support lessen as funding is diverted to those with high support needs
Why we want to find this out
Over the last 5 years there has been considerable public spend on housing support under Supporting People - just over £400million in its last year. The programme has achieved a great deal: services have expanded and increasing numbers of service users have had access to them. Most importantly housing support has had a positive impact on people's lives. Housing support has also been shown to save money in other areas of public spend such as health and homelessness.
There is great concern amongst service providers and other stakeholders that housing support should continue and that it should be funded in a sustainable way. In particular there is concern that:
- the SP ring fence removal will impact negatively on funding levels as local authorities face competing pressures on their budgets
- less housing support services may be commissioned in future
How we intend to find this out
In 2007/08 providers of housing support were asked a series of questions about their funding levels and service volume and these questions were asked again in 2008/09 so that the findings could be compared.
More information
Throughout June and July 2009 the HSEU is getting in touch with service managers to find out about their service volume and funding.