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Housing Services
Housing Services provides temporary accommodation and a wide range of support services to women and children fleeing domestic violence. The team manage 5 refuges in Hackney and 1 in Haringey, delivering safe temporary, specialist supported housing for up to 39 women and 40 children at a time. We are funded by Supporting People and we have been successful in achieving a high standard in our Supporting People review.
We receive our referrals from the Legal and Advice Services Information and Referral line, in accordance to our Referral Procedure and we accept any women fleeing/experiencing domestic violence with diverse needs; including women with No Recourse to Public Funds (as a last resort), women who have been/are involved in prostitution and/or women who are/were drug or substance misuses etc.
Support is provided through a key-working system. This system enables women’s needs to be assessed on an individual basis. An individual support plan is drawn up to ensure that clear targets such as re-housing support, welfare advice, legal protection, education and training and access to counselling are met and achieved. We strive to provide equal services for women and children coming into our refuges. The organisation tries to ensure that women feel that they are living in comfortable, relaxed surroundings where different cultures, identities, life styles and choices are respected and valued.
Housing Services consists of the refuge team and the resettlement team. There are currently seven refuge workers, three resettlement workers employed at present, three of which are part time workers and the six remaining are full time workers.
The refuge workers have housing management/health and safety duties, apart from the part time refuge worker based at house 1 and they are also responsible for the day to day running of the refuge.