Anothe fine mess

Nine months ago JENNY SUTHERFORD* was living a nightmare. Her downstairs windows had been kicked in by her own children and then boarded up so the family were living in darkness. Her neighbours had complained at least 30 times about the behaviour of her youngest son Dean, who, along with her second youngest son, had been excluded from school and was getting into trouble on the estate. And she was facing eviction for rent arrears from her council-owned home in Rochdale.

“I was at the end of my tether,” she says.

“I felt like there was no one to help and the council had washed its hands of us. Then Angie came along and saved my life.”

Angela Jeffs is a support worker with Shelter Inclusion Project, a pilot scheme developed by Shelter in partnership with Rochdale council to tackle antisocial behaviour and prevent families in danger of being given antisocial behaviour orders from becoming socially excluded.

A major part of its work is helping tenants like Sutherford avoid eviction and develop a more stable relationship with their landlord and community. An independent evaluation by York University last month found the pilot had a near 100% success rate (HT 8 April, page 8). It also found it had helped more than 50 households accused of antisocial behaviour curb their behaviour since it launched in October 2002. Of these, none has been evicted and complaints from neighbours have fallen, while 17 cases have been closed because the households no longer need the support.

Supporting people

When Sutherford joined the project last summer she was afraid that she and her four children – Jack* (16), Sue* (14) Ben* (13) and Dean* (9) – would be forced out of their home and into temporary accommodation. But then she was referred to Jeffs to discuss her problems. Within a couple of weeks the two had drawn up an action plan to avoid the eviction order and help stabilise the family.

Jeffs says the principle behind the project is that in many instances, issues such as antisocial behaviour or the threat of eviction are the result of unmet support needs.

For example, eviction can often be avoided if attention is given to small practical details, such as ensuring that the household in question receives all the social benefits it is due, enabling the family to pay its rent.

She says: “It’s our job to identify the smaller things that have added up to create a bigger problem like antisocial behaviour or a stand-off with a landlord. More often than not we’ve seen that giving support to change a few simple things can have a hugely positive effect – for example, providing bored children who have been excluded from school with a few hours of structured activity each week.”

The range of services the support team – which includes four support workers, two children and young persons’ workers, and a youth worker – offers is wide and ranges from helping tenants with money management to arranging social activities for children and providing parenting advice.

Jeffs’ first move for Sutherford was to cancel the eviction order by negotiating a rent repayment sum with the council that Sutherford could afford. The repayment had been £15 a week on top of £60 rent, but after Jeffs’ intervention the repayment sum was dropped to £5 a week.

The second action she took was to buy beds for Sutherford’s children with the project’s hardship fund.

“After chatting at length with Jenny, I realised that the children didn’t have beds and so had to sleep on the floor or on the sofa. That’s why they were always so grumpy and tired. Once they had beds they could then begin to get into more of a routine of going to bed rather than staying up to all hours,” she says.

Jeffs then arranged for a children’s worker to set up some weekly activities for the children, including introducing them to fishing at a cost of just £30 for a fishing rod. Sutherford says the children loved it.

“Now they go out to fish three or four times a week and I’ve got a bit of time for myself,” she says. “If things had been left how they were, I’d be in a hostel by now and we’d probably be separated.”

Now Jeffs is trying to help get the two youngest children back into school by liaising with the local education authority.

Word of mouth

The inclusion support workers help people with a history of behavioural problems or problems with their landlords, rather than those with one-off problems.

I realised the kids had to sleep on the floor, making them tired and grumpy. Once they had beds they got into more of a routine 

Angela Jeffs

“The only cases we definitely won’t deal with are those involving criminal activity such as drug dealing, or those that possibly involve child abuse,” says Jeffs. “Cases such as these will be directed to the appropriate authority.”

Most of the households that Jeffs and her nine colleagues work with are referred to the team by the council’s housing or social services. As the project has become more established, the team has also begun to get more self-referrals from tenants who have heard about the scheme through their neighbours.

This was the case with Louise Richards*, a friend of Sutherford’s. Richards was facing eviction from her council-owned home in Rochdale over the state of her back garden, which had become a dumping ground for rubbish. The council had ordered her to clear it, but she couldn’t afford the £500 clearance charge, so Sutherford advised her to contact Shelter.

Richards, who has four children aged 19,17,16 and 15, has lived at more addresses than she can remember and has been homeless a couple of times before so knew what she could be faced with.

“It isn’t fun,” she says.

After Richards asked Shelter for help, she was allocated support worker Anne Taylor. Richards, who admits she has aggressive tendencies, says Taylor was instrumental in stopping her from losing her home and landing in trouble with the police. “I was going to be out on my ear,” she says. “If I hadn’t got help from Anne, I’d have levelled someone I shouldn’t have and I’d have got arrested. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Anne calmed me down and helped me sort things with the council.”

Richards wasn’t able to contact the council without losing her temper so Taylor organised for the garden clearance charges to be dropped. Taylor admits that it’s early days but she is hoping to help Richards get to the stage where she can talk to the council and other agencies without becoming angry and aggressive. “We’re taking little steps forward. For instance, Lousie has now admitted she drinks a lot. In the next few months we’ll get a better sense of where she’s at and hopefully she’ll become a lot calmer and better able to solve her own problems.”

Taylor says it can take several months of weekly meetings for a tenant to trust their support worker and open up about all their problems. “A lot of the people we deal with are suspicious of authority and are afraid that they’ll be threatened with eviction or be separated from their children,” she says.

“It can take time for them to see that we have no such power and are simply there to help.”

But once a household has begun to see the signs of positive change, improvements tend to take place increasingly quickly. “Jenny has become a lot calmer over the last nine months that we’ve been working with her,” says Taylor. “Now that the children’s worker takes the kids out once a week to do activities such as horse riding and rock climbing, she finally has some time for herself and can relax a little or deal with things like bills.

It’s the same with Lousie – as we’ve worked through her problems with the council she’s been able to let go a little and not get so wound up.

“It’s very stressful to have eviction notices hanging over you and the fear that the police will come knocking because of something your children have done. It’s stress like that that can lead to people becoming a nuisance to others.”

Looking forward

Every three months the inclusion team reviews their cases and the idea is that after 12 months of support, the household will be in a position to find solutions for themselves. But there is no official time limit on the service and support is only ended if there is a mutual agreement that the help of the inclusion project is no longer necessary or the needs of the tenant surpass the capacity of the project – for example, if specialised mental health care is needed.

Shelter’s hope is that in the future the project, which is primarily funded by the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and Supporting People, will expand, enabling them to employ more workers and volunteers to reach out to more families in need.

Project manager Jay Stafford says one idea is to recruit a life-skills teacher who could teach tenants to better look after themselves and their homes.

One thing is for sure – Sutherford and Richards are extremely grateful for the scheme. Says Sutherford: “My life is bearable now. And I still have a roof over my head and my kids around me. That might not sound like much, but it is to me.”