How First Choice Housing Association helps tenants with extra needs
First Choice Housing Association supports tenants with disabilities, veterans and additional complex needs. The cost of living crisis is complex with a lot of information coming out of UK Government and Welsh Government.
Here, Donna Jones, director of corporate services at FCHA, writes about their approach to supporting and communicating with their customers who have extra needs and may need additional help understanding the information.
Q: How many tenants do you have and in what types of accommodation?
Donna: We currently have 822 tenants living in 379 properties, with a mix of Supported Living, Accessible and General Needs.
Q: What extra needs do your tenants have?
Donna: Our tenants have a wide range of needs. We primarily provide accommodation to people with learning disabilities in a supported living setting within the community and also accessible properties for people living with a physical disability. As well as this, we provide accessible properties and general needs homes for people with an armed forces connection. We operate across 19 local authorities in Wales as well as Shropshire and Telford in England.
Q: How have you adapted your services to make sure tenants know you are there to support them?
Donna: With the recent cost of living crisis and the pandemic, we have provided a number of support services to help tenants who may need assistance:
● We have a match fund to help tenants reduce their rent arrears. We will match their payments.
● FCHA initiated a hardship fund for people who can't afford their bills.
● A cost of living leaflet signposting to services available in the area was handed out. This included what tenants could do, what FCHA can do and what the local authorities can do to help.
● Further specific cost of living mailouts were sent out covering similar information as the aforementioned leaflet but in more detail - utility bills etc.
● We hosted in-person and virtual talks on the cost of living crisis at our tenant talk events which were delivered to 60 tenants across the country, with another set of tenant talks in November hosted in Cardiff and Newtown.
Q: A lot of landlords are using digital media. What are your customers telling you about their preferred way to hear from you?
Donna: We regularly conduct tenant surveys to ensure that the quality of our work is maintained and to check that we have the right method of communication for our tenants. When asked what the preferred communication method is, 12% of tenants responded that they would like online communication as well as phone or letter. This means that most of our communications are still physical and mailed out to our tenants. We have recently increased our online communications, as well as providing updates via letters or the quarterly newsletter, all updates also appear on our website and social media channels. To encourage digital inclusion with tenants, we teamed up with Digital Communities Wales to provide 207 pieces of tech to tenants. This digital inclusion project will hopefully increase the number of tenants who would like to have their communication with FCHA in a digital format .
Q: Can you share any lessons you have learned from your work over the last two years through the pandemic and cost of living crisis about supporting people with extra needs. How do you reassure them in such a challenging time?
Donna: We conducted the Digital Inclusion Project during the pandemic to help provide communications tools to tenants who would otherwise be unable to talk to family and friends.
FCHA helped tenants reconnect with their local communities, by allowing them to attend community classes and events such as yoga, doctors appointments, and People First Groups.
One tenant even became an online DJ using their iPad for their virtual community disco.
A number of online events were hosted by FCHA to engage with tenants and understand their needs during this time. These included:
● Tenant Talks and Panels - discussing cost of living, hate crime, and rent setting, these were undertaken virtually to ensure continuity during the pandemic.
● Tenant Discos - Hosted by our Housing Manager Nigel, our regular Easter, Halloween and Christmas discos continued from the comfort of tenants homes using the devices provided for them.
We also offered free ongoing IT support and guidance from the digital charity, Digital Communities Wales.