In many areas, when young people leave the care system they are often offered accommodation in either hostels that provide supported accommodation, straight into the private rented sector or into their own council property. While these solutions work for some, they don’t work for all and a different kind of solution is needed. For young people that don’t want to be living in a large hostel but also could find themselves isolated in a home by themselves before they have set up social support systems for themselves, a shared home that has been designed for this purpose could be the solution.
For a local authority looking to better serve the needs of these young people, their underused small sites in their authority can offer options.
The local authority we are working with on this project is known for their adaptive response to housing needs, and not afraid to be bold in its solutions. With a small sites programme that brings together a number of specialists to find innovative responses to the small sites of the borough for their residents, we were invited to create a bespoke report on how LivShare might be applied. There is a need locally to find solutions for care leavers specifically and an interest in making use of purpose-built shared housing to do that.
With competing demands on increasing pressured resources, even for local authorities it is essential to make a strong case for the solutions that are presented to committees making difficult decisions around where these limited resources are invested.
For this local authority we provided examples of innovative construction systems, outcome indicators to measure success and capture learning, operating models including tenant mix, capital and revenue models and model consultation process with young people within relevant local policy priorities, rationale for this kind of intervention and how it meets the local authority’s objectives.