Positive Partnerships across Health and Housing: Key takeaways from our virtual event

Our recent ‘Positive Partnerships across Health and Housing’ virtual event explored how collaboration between housing associations, councils, and policy leaders can deliver on local priorities to build healthy places and tackle inequalities. 

While the health and housing sectors have always been familiar, they haven’t always had the closest of relationships. 

Reports such as the COVID-19 Marmot review have explicitly highlighted the need for all sectors – including health and housing – to better work together to reduce health inequalities post pandemic; while tragic events such as the death of Awaab Ishak have reminded us of the continuing need for cross-sector collaboration. 

In this member-exclusive event, we heard from housing associations, local councils, and policy leaders to understand how some are making a concerted effort to embed a partnership approach to health and housing and what others can learn from their approach. 

Here are the main takeaways from the virtual event, which was chaired by our head of policy and external affairs, Rachael Williamson. 

Why work together 

As stated in our newly published report on health and housing, ‘Building blocks for life,’ there exists new opportunities for the health and housing sectors to work together. 

It’s a sentiment shared by Liz Parsons, head of public health for social housing and the built environment at Public Health (Milton Keynes, Central Bedfordshire and Bedford Borough), who said: “Housing associations and local authority landlords can play a really big role in health, working with health, and using strong partnerships to help tackle health inequalities.”

Liz said that, in fact, the health and housing sectors need to work together if they are to effectively help those most in need. She explained that more than 80,000 people live in social housing in the area she serves, almost half of whom live in the 20 per cent most deprived neighbourhoods – people who, on average, live seven years fewer than those in the richest neighbourhoods. 

“Partnership working can enable better engagement with those facing the most acute health inequalities,” she said.

(Clockwise from top-left) Liz Parsons, Kirsty Pepper, Sarah Davis, Phil Hardy, Rachael Williamson

Liz also pointed out that there is a lot of natural cross-over between health and housing, even if it might not initially look like it at first glance. “If you take issues that you initially think are health related,” she said, “when you look at things in more detail you find that, actually, they’re just as important for housing as they are for health.” 

She gave the example of smoking, explaining how it costs a tenant who smokes around 20 cigarettes a day around £5,000 per year, which can impact on aspects such as arrears; increases fire risk in properties; and adds to asset management costs due to potential property damage. 

How to work together 

Public Health has been working in partnership with housing providers Grand Union Housing Group and Peabody since it launched the Health and Housing Partnership in 2022. 

The partnership, jointly funded by each of the three partners, aims to create a blueprint for a “new way of working” to tackle health inequalities in communities. And while work is still ongoing, there are some early successes to remark on. 

Using the partnership, 12,500-home Grand Union has launched a project that aims to create a seamless link between health and housing organisations in order to facilitate easy sharing of data around illnesses associated with damp and mould. 

“Project Adam seeks to create a single pathway between health and housing, explicitly connecting data on asthma as identified by health professionals, with us as the customer’s landlord, so we can then start to tailor those interventions accordingly,” explained director of operations Phil Hardy.

Many Grand Union Housing Group customers find their ill health affects their ability to carry out daily tasks (Cr: Grand Union)

The project allows for a “single-system benefit”, Phil added. “We can see the benefit to the health system as well as the benefit to the housing system.” 

Through the partnership, Grand Union has also transformed the Bilberry Road estate, an area that had previously been associated with crime and anti-social behaviour. 

“We’ve changed that into a stable, attractive, engaged community by working in partnership with Public Health colleagues, to the point that we’re now looking to demobilise the community hub that we’ve got and move on to our next identified area,” Phil said. 

Peabody, meanwhile, has focussed its efforts around health and housing on delivering impactful community hubs and improving community engagement. 

Kirsty Pepper, managing director for the north counties, explained how the 100,000-home provider’s Sandringham Hub (in Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire) has over the past six months served around 200 attendees across 18 sessions, made more than 50 direct referrals to a range of public health services, and issued around 120 food pantry and food parcels.

Peabody's referrals cover everything from weight management support to drug and alcohol assistance (Cr: Peabody)

Such support has only been possible due to the involvement of 19 other agencies. “To succeed, you do need quite a lot of other agencies around to support and be part of that,” she said. “For me, this is how we bring health and housing closer.” 

Kirsty explained how Peabody’s Sandringham hub, among others, “exactly” reflects Recommendation Six in the Better Social Housing Review, which states: “Housing associations should develop a proactive local community presence through community hubs which foster greater multi-agency working.” 

Overcoming challenges and grasping opportunities 

While working together across health and housing can yield strong results, it’s not always a smooth process. 

Work around data and insights, for example, is “one of the big, big opportunities, but also one of the big challenges", according to Liz Parsons.

She explained how, through the partnership, Public Health is working across different organisations and systems to enable better sharing of data, as doing so “helps us to understand and build a better picture of our residents’ health needs”. 

Similarly, Peabody is mapping its own data and Public Health data to identify areas that might benefit most from a community hub or similar services. “It’s really exciting piece of work,” Kirsty said. 

Training is another area identified by the panel as key to delivering effective partnership working between health and housing. 

At the start of its work with Public Health, Peabody asked colleagues what they knew about Public Health and Public Health services. Thirty-eight per cent of colleagues who responded said they didn’t know what Public Health was all about, while 42 per cent said they had never referred a Peabody resident to Public Health before. 

A training programme was subsequently launched, which covered everything from mental health to stop-smoking advice. “If this was going to be a success,” Kirsty said, “we needed to really bring that knowledge to light for our housing colleagues who were out and about with their residents.” 

Liz Parsons added that building trust and engagement between stakeholders “has been really important” in delivering successful partnership-working overall between health and housing. 

The CIH perspective 

Also speaking at the virtual event was our senior policy and practice officer, Sarah Davis, who summed up the importance of bringing health and housing closer together. 

“It’s not just about our existing homes and communities,” she said, “but it’s thinking about how we plan health into our communities and into our homes as we expand and as we build. 

“For CIH, that includes how we support members in terms of thinking about what they are doing with their homes, how they are working from the start to build in health.” 

She also touched on the ‘Building blocks for life’ report, which was published at the start of the year in partnership with Peabody, Milton Keynes Council, Bedford Borough Council, Grand Union, and Central Bedfordshire Council. 

Sarah said: “What we’re really keen to do is [look at] how we go beyond projects and schemes to build it into our processes and sustain it in the long-term into our corporate and strategic ways of working.” 

• Access the presentation slides 
• Watch the full recording 
• Read the ‘Building blocks for life’ report

Main image: Shutterstock AI