Nottingham City Council having ‘massive amount of difficulty’ housing people with complex needs

Nottingham is having a “massive amount of difficulty” in housing people living with with complex needs due to a shortage in supported living accommodation. Supported living accommodation is often used to help people with a learning disability, mental health condition, or those who are homeless, who want to live independently while still receiving care and support.

It is a common alternative to full residential care. During a Nottingham City Council Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee meeting on Thursday (October 23) a shortage of appropriate accommodation was highlighted as one of the council department’s “biggest risks”.

Interim Corporate Director for Adult Social Care and Health, Roz Howie, said there are more than 100 people on a waiting list for supported living accommodation despite expansion programme. She said Nottingham has an over-reliance on residential care because it does not have enough housing options to accommodate people in less intensive services.

“We do have a massive amount of difficulty housing people with multiple complex needs,” she said. "Because we don’t have these alternatives readily available I think our bigger risk is these people go into much more restrictive care provision, and when they are in that it is difficult to get them back out again.

“I think that is our greatest risk, that families cannot cope. My daughter could not live in extra care and the next one after that is residential care. [She] went into supported living and, as an example, of the 110 supported living accommodations in the county, there were two available. That is the reality.”

Ms Howie said the council must get better at early intervention and prevention, but explained this was problematic because these types of services are easy to cut because the impact is not immediately measureable.

Cllr MariaJoannou (Lab), a member of the committee, said she was also concerned a lack of appropriate accommodation for people with complex needs was having a wider impact on the Bulwell communities she represents.

She raised particular worry over accommodation for those who were homeless and have complex needs such as substance addiction.

“There has been quite a lot of complaints of anti-social behaviour, drug abuse, and other forms of addiction, and this has had quite a significant impact on communities,” she said.

“It seems to me if we are going to house vulnerable people we need to have some kind of support that goes with that? The knock-on effect it has had with some of my residents has been unbelievable really. It has been horrendous.”

Sharon Guest, Director of Housing, admitted there was not enough support. There are currently only 48 Housing First properties, which include wrap-around support.

“It is done, I don’t want to give the impression nothing is there,” she said. "But what is there is not as substantial and robust as it needs to be to support people.”