“The problem is other services, you know, trying to work with mental health teams, the social services, getting everybody involved and it is like, that is like banging your head against a brick wall, so you just keep banging and banging until someone eventually listens to you.” Consequently, the need to persevere and advocate for customers was emphasised and resistance from other services was a source of frustration: “There is barriers from other services … so it’s difficult to maybe advocate for them saying, ‘right OK, we have got Housing First who is involved, we are looking at it from a different angle, a different way of supporting them, can you also help’? Sometimes they say ‘no’, so it’s about us advocating and being persistent with the other services to get the support that we need. But it can be frustrating sometimes …
There seemed to be a misunderstanding from other services about the nature of support Housing First can offer its customers. It was highlighted that Housing First is part of the wider support system, not the whole answer; the approach is designed to coordinate services and, if necessary (in the absence of other services), to provide additional support, building trust between the customer, Housing First and support services that will help customers maintain their tenancies. It is not about providing health and social care to customers, but coordinating a team that can support customers as required. Thus, it does not replace other services working with this customer group, but it can and does help to facilitate that engagement. “I think one of the cons might be is that other services think you can solve everything and obviously that is not the case, it is about everybody sort of playing their part. Yes, we might be able to do a lot more in other services, but we can't do it alone.” One marked example of this was discussed, whereby a Housing First customer had been discharged from hospital without the necessary support in place, and was described as having to “fend for himself for a week” by one stakeholder: ““It is like the week after he’d moved in, so we were going, to make sure he was alright even though that wasn’t our role, because we are not carers but we just wanted to make sure he was safe.”
“We go every other day to make sure he is safe, that he is OK. But that isn’t something we should be doing. We are doing it because it’s not being done.” 34
