The Hospital Housing Enablement Team aims to help patients to settle back into a safe home as quickly as possible after discharge from hospital.
The district councils, county council and city council are working with NHS Partners to support patients who need help with housing concerns following a stay in hospital.
The scheme places a housing specialist within the hospital, to work with the patient and hospital staff to identify housing issues that are a barrier to discharge and then puts in place the right steps so patients can return home as soon as possible after treatment. It also enables ongoing support once they are home, including help with furniture and access to benefits
A few examples of the interventions that are provided by the service include:
Access to private rented accommodation
Support with rehousing in future
House clearance (including hoarding issues)
Negotiations with landlords around repairs
Setting up utilities
Minor repairs
By working with low level adaptations the service can complete a high volume of interventions, which has led to very positive results in a way that is person-centric. In addition to the benefits to patients themselves, the Hospital Housing Enablement scheme showed that it significantly reduced the cost of housing-related delays during the pilot phase of the project.
The grant is discharge dependant, for residents to access the service they must still be in hospital
