A day in the life of the Alliance Housing Advice service, March 2021

​I work providing the Hiss advice service. The service has developed from our face to face Hiss Drop in which was open to all twice a week. Pre-Covid the most we would see in a week was 10-15 people.  In comparison I often take 30+ calls in a week; these are all recorded on a spreadsheet.
 
Providing a frontline service such as this can mean I am often the first person the clients have spoken to about their difficult and distressing situations.
 
This is an example of my day to day work in a week.
 

• Deposit Guarantee referrals: Collating information to the deposit guarantee team. In reality, a lot supporting documents need to be included with a referral; this has taken weeks in some cases.
• A2A:  Completing A2As with clients over the phone. This can be tricky as often the clients are not in the best place (physically) to be able to answer the sensitive questions asked of them, but we do our best to work around it.  I also receive a lot of calls from clients and professionals about where people are on the waiting list, which I pass onto the A2A hub.
• Devon Home Choice: Support ranges from assisting people to re-set their passwords, registering or updating DHC.  Working with the Community Mental Health Team to support a vulnerable patient with a hope to prevent a hospital admission by accessing more appropriate accommodation. Band B awarded.  Assistance given to bid and accept offers of accommodation, which leads to…
• Making applications to the Discretionary Housing Payment for rent in advance for social housing. Applying to DHP for rent arrears and (eg) a shortfall award for a person who needs to downsize.
• Benevolent and charity applications: Applying for other funding including Vicars Relief for rent in advance for those who do not qualify for DHP.  Eg A young lady who has 2 weeks until her due date, she is having twins and has no other way to be accommodated before the birth of her babies.
• Universal Credit: Assisting clients to update their journals with rent details.  Requesting and completing mandatory reconsiderations for the limited capability for work assessments, no result as of yet…
• Environmental Health: Advocacy on behalf of a professional and their client and family regarding dangerous private rented, liaising with Environmental Health to ‘encourage’ the completion and safety of works. We will be applying to DHP to clear the arrears to improve their move on chances.
• Rough Sleeper Team: Calls from people reporting to be rough sleeping or finding a rough sleeper. Detailed location and information sent to the team for them to check the following morning.  Explanation of how the Outreach service works and what they can offer.
• Advice to professionals: Various Alliance services and other agencies contact the Advice line and it feels good to share our knowledge about what we can achieve for our vulnerable people.

 
All work completed at home, tech can be an issue, but it’s working well today