Housing Guide for Care Leavers

Help to sustain your tenancy and continued support on offer to you

Before you are allocated your final stage accommodation, we in family services alongside housing services will ensure that you are aware of your tenancy obligations, such as paying your rent on time and paying any service charges, keeping the property in a good and clean condition, and behaving in a reasonable manner. We will also talk to you, so you understand the likely consequences of breaching your tenancy conditions.

Sustaining your tenancy requires a range of life skills, access to services and appropriate support at appropriate times. 

We hope that you will feel prepared for living on your own successfully but sometimes life can throw up unexpected challenges. We want to assist you wherever we can in preventing your tenancy from coming to a premature end by providing the necessary information, advice, and support for you to be able to maintain your tenancies. This will include advice on

  • Housing Support
  • Money Support
  • Employment Support

Often, the best way to prevent homelessness is to look at the reasons for any problems in a tenancy and see how any underlying issues can be resolved. So, if you are struggling to maintain your tenancy, contacting your Housing Advisor, Social Worker or Personal Advisor, as soon as possible, is really important.

Help From Family Services 

We have a proactive duty to support you until the age of 21. However, it’s important to note that while contact with your social worker/Personal Advisor after the age of 21 may become less formal than when you were younger, there is a duty for local authorities to keep in touch with care leavers and provide help and support if requested up until you are 25. This could be for a short or longer period depending on your assessed needs. If you have been out of contact with us for a while you can still request help. If you don’t make contact, we will contact you at least on an annual basis thereafter to  check in.

Care Leavers Local Offer

The Care Leavers Local Offer states that you can ask for support up to the age of 25. The offer explains what we will do (legal entitlements) and what we can do (additional discretionary support) to help. It also explains what you can expect from us as a local authority. 

The Care Leavers Local Offer will cover your entitlements to finance, health and wellbeing, relationships, education and training, employment, accommodation, and participation in society. It is a good idea to ask your social worker or Personal Advisor to show you a copy of this. You can also find this in our guide to leaving care. It will help you with understanding if you are getting what you should be.

From the moment you sign your tenancy, we want to reassure you that you can contact us about any difficulties you may experience during your tenancy. It is important that you are not worried or anxious to contact us for help with problems.

Regular contact - we will support you moving into your tenancy and maintain contact if you want us to, through visiting, telephone calls/emails to find out how you are doing. We recognise that you are more likely to confide in us if we put the effort in to build a relationship of trust with you while you are adjusting to the tenancy.

Know what help is available

Knowing what advice and support is available in your local area (e.g. income maximisation, welfare benefits and money and debt advice services) will be crucial where you need specialist help that we cannot offer in-house – so please contact your PA and social worker for advice.

Floating support explained

Floating support is broadly defined as housing-related support to help you manage your accommodation. Floating support can be particularly beneficial as their role is focused on ensuring you can maintain your housing but may also involve advocacy for you and helping you to access services.

Please note, this is available depending on spaces at the time of referral so please make sure you plan this with your social worker or Personal Advisor.

Help From Housing

  • Refer to the housing pack you were given when you signed your tenancy. That should have the details of your Housing Officer. This should always be your first point of contact for Housing issues. If you need help with this do not forget to contact your social worker or Personal Advisor.
  • If you have a tenancy with a Housing Association, remember to check with the Housing Officer about where else you can get help and information.
  • For those of you placed in Council properties the newly relaunched housing website is a good place to start looking for additional help.  
  • Go to the Housing tab which will lead to a ‘paying your rent’ page with how to contact Housing services. 
  • Housing services are also making better use of Instagram to share information, search housingmattersrbkc on Instagram to find their account. There is lots of local information for you to view there.
  • Housing services also have a quarterly magazine Housing Matters which is delivered directly through your letterbox. It is worth ensuring you are looking through this when it arrives, as It has information about improvement works, community activities as well as information about benefits, how to access additional support provided through their financial inclusion projects (food banks, The Pantry, the Savvy Shopper Bus, Green Doctor etc). 
  • It’s important you ensure you know exactly where your local housing office is located. You can always visit anytime to seek help, advice or report a repair. 

Please note

You will have a dedicated housing officer that you can contact – the neighbourhood services coordinator – which will be allocated depending on your address. 

You can call housing management services on 0800 137 111. This is also their Out of hours service for emergency repairs. They will direct you to the right person. 

If your repair is still not resolved after speaking with someone from the repairs team, the dedicated Neighbourhood Services Coordinator (NSC) can be contacted, who will assist you getting the situation resolved. 

If you find yourself in difficulty and falling into arrears, you will also have an income officer who can refer you to welfare and financial support. Please ensure you access this help should you need to.. 

You will automatically be informed of your key contacts at the time of signing your new tenancy. Please  keep this information safe.

Advocacy services available to you

An Advocate is an independent specialist who will be able to support and sign-post you to relevant organisations who can help you with your housing needs. 

If you find it difficult to understand your care and support, an Advocate will help ensure you are heard; as well as making sure your rights and entitlements being upheld. 

An Advocate will:

  • Help you to be more involved in important decisions about your life.
  • Support you to communicate your wishes and feelings.
  • Make you aware of your rights. 
  • Provide information on what options are available to you
  • Refer you to services that can help you find your feet (financial services, education services etc.)

Some other useful advice and Contacts

Cost of living support and assistance on offer that is available to you

If you are on Universal credit, you should receive a reduction on your water bill, however you will need to inform Thames Water when you initially sign up.

  • Please ensure you call and contact Thames water 0800 316 9800
  • Your social worker or Personal Advisor is a good source of up-to-date information and may be able to link you to our Benefits advisor
  • Visit the Cost of Living Support Hub for more information on support available to you. 

 
Useful contacts for employment and any benefits queries

Any benefit related issues you can contact

Energy bills advice and support

For any assistance and help with saving money on your energy bills you can use Green Doctors London.

Green Doctors London can organise a consultation with you directly to support any swap in energy provider or debts you may have.

Alternatively, you can email them [email protected] or telephone 0300 365 3005.

Last updated: 25 October 2023