Housing

Supporting People

The Supporting People programme offers vulnerable people the opportunity to improve their quality of life by providing a stable environment which enables greater independence.

Introduction

Supporting People began on 1 April 2003, bringing together seven funding streams across Whitehall for the first time. It is a grant programme administered through 150 top-tier authorities in partnership with Housing, Health, Social Services and Probation, and is delivered largely by the third sector (the voluntary and community sector, and housing associations).

From its very beginning Supporting People's main aim was to help end social exclusion by preventing crisis and more costly service intervention and enabling vulnerable people to live independently both in their own home and within their community through the provision of vital housing-related support services.

Authorities' performance in delivering housing-related support will be measured through the new Comprehensive Area Assessments from April 2009, and through the two National Indicators 141 and 142 (formerly known as KPI 2 and 1, respectively).

Supporting People funding

The Government has invested over £8.7bn since the programme began in 2003; and announced a further £4.9bn funding up to 31 March 2011.  It is the biggest single source of Government revenue funding for the Third Sector - over £1 billion per year.

From April 2009, for the first time, Supporting People has been allocated to councils as a non-ringfenced named grant, paid separately to, but with the same financial flexibility as, Area Based Grants. This removal of the ring fence provides councils with the opportunity to come up with new and innovative ways to support vulnerable people in a range of different situations.

A package of measures is being developed to support the sector during this period of change. This includes a new financial modeling tool, to be published next year, which will provide evidence at a local level on the financial benefits of investment in housing-related support.

The Supporting People programme makes a real difference

Supporting People is an invest to save budget - expenditure of £1.54bn in housing-related support services, alongside other expenditure costs associated with supporting vulnerable people, such as housing and social care costs, delivers estimated net savings of £2.77bn to the exchequer.

The programme helps around one million people at any one time, including:

  • over 835,000 are older people with support needs
  • over 40,000 single homeless people
  • over 37,000 people with mental health problems
  • over 10,000 women at risk of domestic violence

Supporting People Outcomes (external link) data provides the evidence that housing-related support services make a real difference and deliver positive outcomes. For example, between April and December 2008, services achieved the following outcomes:

  • 19,000 people accessed their desired training and education needs
  • 37,500 people maintained their accommodation and avoided eviction
  • 27,000 people established contact with their family and friends, and 41,000 with external services
  • 14,500 were able to better manage their substance misuse
  • 5,200 people gained paid employment

Contact the Supporting People team

The Meet the Team document, available on the Supporting People website at: http://www.spkweb.org.uk/Contacts/Meet+The+Team.htm  (external link) provides all relevant contact details, including a brief overview of areas of responsibility.

Related publications

You may also be interested in …

On this site

On other sites

Rough sleeping

A fifteen point action plan that sets out our vision to work with partners to end rough sleeping by 2012.

Have your say

My favourites