A Day in the Life of a Duty Housing Officer

Andrew Jenkins on 15/12/2009

A resident responding to one of our resident involvement surveys suggested that it would be a good idea if residents were given the opportunity to see what it was like to be a duty housing officer for a day. After discussions in the housing team a format was agreed, a date set and residents invited to be part of the project. The plan devised was that were to be three parts to the day. The “duty-manager-for-a-day-residents” would…
1. follow up an invented incident report from night staff, read through a made-up resident’s history and agree on a suitable course of action. They would decide if it should be a warning, eviction or offer any other alternatives. They would hold an appeal if needed and follow this all up with the relevant paperwork.
2. have the opportunity to conduct a full walkabout in the hostel, checking on maintenance issues, noise nuisance and dealing with conduct issues.
3. would be able to interview a new resident moving in, book them onto the system and complete all the relevant paperwork related to the move in.
Everyone joining would have an opportunity to do all three activities which were made as realistic as possible, using the duty officer’s office, the emergency bedroom and the Design for Life Project, bearing in mind of course confidentiality and appropriate use of equipment. On the day we had four residents arrived and after the introduction everyone got down to work! All three activities were successful. However with all the discussion that took place, the session on the incident report took more than twice as long as planned. Gauging by the reactions and the general feedback it was the most crucial, interesting and fun thing of the day. The participants put themselves in the same position as the staff do, and found it difficult to come to an agreement on what was the best course of action. Housing staff involved in the day prompted them to think about different aspects of someone loosing their accommodation and got them to think about what it would be like to make someone homeless. Clearly the day was a success and one we would like to repeat. One participant, Eugene said, “I would love to do it again, a really enjoyable day”, and another, Wayne, “A really great day, lots of information and fun too”

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