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Linkages between housing and support - what is important from the perspective of people living with a mental illness

Summary

Project Number: 50102
Research Theme: Health_Ageing_and_Disability
Project Leader: O'Brien, Anne
Funding Year: 2001
Research Centre: Swinburne-Monash

Description

This project was developed to address a gap in Australian information on what people living with a mental illness who need housing and support services see as the major factors that support their ability to maintain stable housing. The project focused on people living with a mental illness because this is a highly vulnerable group often with complex support needs. The importance of effective linkages between housing and other forms of assistance and support has been recognised as central for achieving positive outcomes for particular vulnerable groups in the community.

People living with a mental illness and experiencing the consequences of high levels of disability are one group recognised as having major difficulties in accessing and maintaining stable, affordable and appropriate housing. In Victoria, the Housing and Support Program (HASP), established to provide more effective responses to people living with a mental illness, has been particularly successful in supporting people with very high needs upon entry to the program to maintain stable housing. At the time of the project, the Mental Health Branch, Victorian Department of Human Services (DHS) was undertaking a review of the HASP with a particular focus on seeking feedback from those in the program as well as support providers. The interviews with program participants aimed to develop a clearer understanding of the factors that ensure the success of this program from their perspective. We know that not all people living with a mental illness will need, or be able to access, the highly rationed HASP, which currently houses some 700 people. There are many others who need access to affordable, appropriate and secure housing with well coordinated support services if they are to have any chance of maintaining housing stability.

The project aimed to provide insights into what they themselves identify as the factors that support them to maintain housing as well as the factors that they consider can jeopardise their housing. This project links with the DHS review of the HASP by targeting the group of people living with a mental illness and receiving support services who have succeeded in accessing and sustaining appropriate, affordable and stable housing which is not formally linked to a support program. The project team interviewed people living with a mental illness in rental housing - either private, public or community housing - without the benefit of the formal coordination with support services offered by the HASP. These people will have experienced crises in housing previously. The project team liaised closely with the Mental Health Branch (and the Office of Housing) to ensure that this research project complemented the HASP review and informed initiatives to better support people living with a mental illness to access and maintain their housing. Research questions addressed included:

• What is important to people to maintain their tenancies?
• What is it that jeopardises their ability to access housing and to maintain housing?
• When housing and support works well, why does it work?
• What do mental health consumers need to know and have in place to make it work for them?
• When doesn't it work? Why doesn't it work? What is needed to make it work?

More Information

Final Report: No. 025: Linkages between housing and support - what is important from the perspective of people living with a mental illness
386 KB PDF Document

Positioning Paper: No. 033: Linkages between housing and support - what is important from the perspective of people living with a mental illness
185 KB PDF Document