A day in the life of a Housing Support Work (HSW) - Tom

I have been a Housing Support Worker for two years. During this time the dynamic has changed, though the core responsibilities have always stayed the same. We work in a large team supervised by four managers. Each HSW will only ever report to one manager. The team are very supportive and friendly and we all try to take a laid back approach and help each other the best we can. The job can be stressful so we all try and have a sense of humour and enjoy ourselves. Within the office we try to make a welcoming environment for service users, providing a place that young people will choose to come to for support and advice or just to hang out.  A typical day in the office will involve catching up with paper work and e-mails, writing up contact notes, support plans and risk assessments, dealing with benefit claims, liaising with other organisations, arranging appointments, visiting properties and meeting young people in or out the office. We also have duty days that involve assessing and referring young people who present as homeless.

Housing management is a big part of the role which includes reporting repairs, managing arrears on rent accounts and dealing with neighbourhood complaints. Also sometimes we have to clean and clear rooms, move residents and their belongings and try to have as much presence at the properties as possible, it involves travelling almost everyday.
Ideally we should be spending 50% of our time in the office and 50% of our time with young people, visiting properties or attending meetings. Service users often turn up randomly and emergencies do occur so we have to be adaptable and prioritize workload.

The hardest thing about the job is balancing and prioritizing the workload though we are given enough autonomy within the role to make sure this happens. Above all the job is very rewarding especially when you see a positive change within a young person and when you know that you have made a positive impact on a their life. The advice I would give to someone starting the role is to constantly ask questions and communicate. Everyone in the team is very supportive and open and the way we all manage is to use each other.

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