Mental Health Awareness Week – speaker interview with Jayne Adamson MBE

As communities grapple with huge challenges such as the cost of living crisis and recovering from the pandemic, there is increasing demand for mental health support. Landlords are in a position to identify and support tenants who may be in crisis and help them to a place of safety.

Housing 2022 speaker Jayne Adamson at believe housing led a team of volunteers to support people experiencing suicidal thoughts during the pandemic, alongside their day job.

She has since received an MBE for her services to housing and shares some insights with us in this short interview.

Why is it so important for housing providers to support the mental health of their tenants and colleagues?

At believe housing we believe in life without barriers, we want our customers to thrive in their homes and communities. Good quality, stable housing is vital to good mental health.

When customers are struggling with their mental health, it often manifests itself through their tenancy and we see issues such as poor home conditions, neglect, neighbour complaints, poor decision making, non-payment of rent, feelings of hopelessness.  And this is where most of us tend to pick up concerns for our customers through our enforcement actions.

At believe housing, we seek to identify and assist our customers with mental health issues from the outset, rather than waiting for it to manifest itself through high level anti-social behaviour or rent arrears. We explore this at application stage and through our day-to-day interactions with customers, we feel it’s important that staff can recognise when someone needs help and support.

All our teams are equipped to seek support for customers, we offer a range of support services to help new and existing customers with financial security and sustaining their tenancy, which we always hope supports good physical and mental wellbeing as well supporting them to engage in other professional or voluntary services.

In terms of our colleagues’ mental health, if they are healthy, motivated and focused, they will achieve more. It’s important that we support staff who are experiencing mental health problems to cope and recover to get back to peak performance. It’s important that mental health is not stigmatised. At believe housing we have open and honest conversations in the workplace about how we are feeling, good or bad. Staff are encouraged to seek support and have easy access routes into help around mental health support and wellbeing.

Why did believe housing decide to set up a suicide prevention initiative? What did this involve?

We already had a small cohort of leads trained in Suicide ASSIST who were available to support customers who disclosed suicidal thoughts to staff, these calls were often the result of financial difficulties or needing to move urgently. We equipped the leads with a script that helps them to assess risk, included contact for local GPs, crisis team, community mental health services, voluntary services, and local support groups. Overall, their role is to get those in distress to a place of safety.

During the pandemic calls of this nature trebled compared to previous years because some people were unable to access their regular services, were lonely and depressed, and felt they had nowhere to turn.  The calls were of varying degree, from having a plan to kill themselves or just needing someone to talk to. The calls were distressing for untrained staff to take.

To enhance the existing service, we trained more staff to take calls and we set up easily accessible contact routes for staff to reach a lead immediately, who was then able to provide an immediate response.  We also set up an Urgent Support Group.  Due to the distressing nature of some of the calls, the leads can access counselling and peer support.

What has been the impact of your work on local communities?

By seeking to identify and support those who have poor or declining mental health from the outset, we have been able to pro-actively work with customers and their support networks (or put support networks in place) to ensure that their housing is appropriate, sustainable, affordable, and overall, a stable home.  This impacts on our termination rates as people are more inclined to stay.  Our termination rates continue to be low (5%) for those terminating in the first 12 months of their tenancy which in turn provides stable and sustainable communities.

What learning will you be sharing at Housing 2022 to help others adopt a similar approach? 

As we all see an increase in poor mental health coming out of COVID, and we are getting into people’s homes, it is important that staff are equipped to be able to reactively support their customers in times of crisis, to get them to a place of safety and get them the professional support that they need.

It’s also vitally important about having those proactive, open and honest conversations about mental health, so mental health is not stigmatised, and staff can offer support and be supported themselves where needed.  It is important we take a holistic approach to wellbeing, so the entire organisation is aware of how its activities impact on our staff and customers.