Housing support event success

People who are supported to live in their own homes will have more opportunity to help shape the service in the future, following a successful event in Shropshire.

The Shropshire Housing Support Group is made up of people who receive housing support services and their carers, and the group hosted an event at Shropshire Council’s Shirehall in Shrewsbury.

The group wanted to look at how better to involve service users across the West Midlands with housing support services, with the aim of sharing best practice and finding out more about involvement opportunities and projects across the region.

As a result, over 90 people attended last month’s (July) event, including service users, support providers, local authorities, councillors and Shropshire Council colleagues.

The event brought service user involvement to life, and helped demonstrate there are numerous examples of involvement and engagement in Shropshire.  These examples have now been shared amongst colleagues, and organisers said the event was already helping to improve things.

One of the people at the event, Sam Williamson, from Stoke-on-Trent City Council, said:

“Thanks for putting on the event.  Our service users really enjoyed it and came away with some good ideas.”

Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for housing, Councillor Malcolm Price, added:

“The positive feedback has made the event even more worthwhile and shows how useful people found it.  It gave everyone lots of ideas on how to involve people so those using the service and who know it best can help improve things in the future.”

Shropshire Housing Support Group also used the event to launch its new Strategy for Involvement and to mark some of the achievements of the group over the last year.