Starts at Home Day 2025
Save our supported housing
It all starts at home. A home is the foundation of a healthy, safe and happy life. Supported housing helps thousands of people across England who need help to live independently and live well at home. This year, the National Housing Federation (NHF) is calling for the Government to #SaveOurSupportedHousing.
Today, we stand with the NHF and housing associations across the UK to call for long-term funding for supported housing, its people, purpose, and potential.
Supported housing provides a stable home for customers with disabilities, mental health challenges, families fleeing domestic violence, young people and many more. It’s not just a roof over their heads; these homes provide the foundation for people to and communities to thrive.
Without a stable foundation, many people who need support to live independently will face an uncertain future. Research shows that without supported housing, NHS hospital beds would face 110,000 more days of delayed discharge, and 41,000 more people would face homelessness.
To support this important campaign, we are sharing powerful stories from our customers and colleagues, highlighting how supported housing transforms lives. We need to continue providing this vital lifeline for people living in our communities.
A colleague’s story:
My name is Michael and I’ve worked in supported housing for 20 years. I’m very passionate and very proud to work in such a varied and specialised housing sector. I have seen the sector grow enormously over the past 20 years and can only see it growing even further. This is why the Starts at Home campaign is so important to me, to our customers and their families – to raise awareness and to showcase its importance and continued need; to highlight the need for investment and funding to reconfigure existing or develop more specialised schemes as local authority housing strategies change to meet shifting demand.
Supported Housing was in its infancy when I first joined the sector with a small charity in Huyton, Merseyside. Care homes had been deregistered allowing residents to become tenants and overnight acquire greater autonomy and rights. The charity’s customer group was predominantly people with learning disabilities and mental health challenges. Fast-forward 20 years at Onward Homes, we have a very large customer base, which emphasises the varied needs of supported housing customers. This includes customers with learning disabilities, mental health challenges, homelessness, families fleeing domestic violence, people with physical disabilities and young people. This means we need to provide intensive housing management services, homeless hostels, rehab units and floating support.
I love working with such varied customers and I love a success story too!
Just like Mr E. He was born in premature at 27 weeks weighing just 1lb. He has cerebral palsy and is an assisted wheelchair user. He came to live at a newly developed 12x bed supported living scheme in Merseyside around four years ago. It was Mr E’s first experience of independent specialist living, having previously lived in shared supported accommodation with four other adults through another housing provider.
There were lots of rules in his previous accommodation, including a curfew of 10pm. Mr E did not like living in this way, so he worked with his social worker and occupational therapist (OT) for 18 months to move in to independent specialist living.
With the assistance of his OT and the support of Onward, Mr E’s flat has been adapted to fully meet his support needs – he has a ceiling track hoist, a rise and fall kitchen sink, a power assisted door to his flat. Alongside a fully adapted bathroom and state of the art Tunstall equipment.
Mr E’s home allows him to live more independently allowing him time, space and freedom to focus on things that really matter to him. Mr E is a disabled rights campaigner and has taken part in 11 campaign events across the North West to raise awareness of the challenges people face and presenting solutions to provide people with better life experiences. He is a true inspiration.
Mr E is passionate about disability rights he said “My Final message is I’m not seeking recognition; I’m seeking change. I believe that everyone is able to achieve whatever they set their mind. I believe in you, so you should be proud of yourself too”.