Five golden rules of being a Policy Officer

When I started at CHC in 2012, I had no real idea what a Policy Officer did. Two and a half years later, it’s fair to say that I sort of know. That’s hopefully no reflection on my ability to do the job, but more a reflection of a distinct benefit of the role. Policy Officer roles are like snowflakes - no two are exactly the same. I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in working on current policy development, particularly around the Supporting People programme in Wales, whilst also providing some contemporary thought on links with the health service in Wales. Queue shameless plug for CHCs contribution to “Making Prudent Healthcare Happen”.


1. Ctrl-f is your best friend
The length of consultation documents, the complexity of legislation, the sheer volume of research and briefings was a daunting prospect when I initially started. Part of the Policy Officer art is in being able to understand something complex or lengthy pretty quickly and, more importantly, understand the impact and opportunities on the sector.

2. At events, the real work begins when you arrive at the coffee station or go to the buffet
You’re inundated with events to attend… both for your own organisation and being a representative at others. I’ve learned quickly that the buffet queue or coffee station is where the real value of most events lie. Particularly if you’re trying to put across some complex points about how the sector works, stuff around more than bricks and mortar to someone with a basic understanding of what housing associations do… it’s far tougher for them to walk away whilst scoffing down a slice of quiche.

3. Decide on a one liner to describe what you do, and stick to it…
I’ve tried not to worry too much about the fact that my Nan thinks I work for a Local Authority, my Mum thinks I build homes and my partner has given up trying to explain what I do altogether. My one liner has always been “I work for a housing charity”… most people are happy enough to take that and leave it there. Anyone who has probed further has, no doubt, after I’ve finished my 30 minute explanation, learnt their lesson.

4. Carry a food bag
As someone who can’t function when hungry I’ve made constant use of a food bag to enhance my ability to eat well between meetings, event and the office. Policy, if it were a sport, would be an endurance sport with a few sprints added in for good measure. For me, bananas, fig rolls, seeds and nuts, apples, jaffa cakes, dark chocolate, peanut butter have all made regular or guest appearances.

5. Be passionate and believe in the work
When most people think Policy Officer they don’t think excitement, explosions etc. It’s true that you’re more Q than you are 007 - equipping the sector for the challenges ahead. But it can be dry, so being passionate about what you’re helping to achieve, and believing that it’s genuinely the answer to complex socio-economic challenges, is vital.

I’ll still, where beneficial and appropriate, highlight the role of housing associations in improving health, tackling poverty and working with communities. Not because of any feeling of obligation to do so, but because seeing the impact of housing associations, and being part of developing the thinking around improving health through housing, has had a permanent impact on my own belief system.


So those are my 5 (not so) Golden Rules for being a Policy Officer.

In the words of one of my idols, and role models - Stay classy CHC. 

Matthew Kennedy
Policy Officer

Matt will be starting his new role as Policy Officer at Macmillan Cymru next week. Pob lwc, Matt!

“Trust me, I’m a housing professional...”

This week at the Welsh NHS Confederation conference, the menu of topics is interesting and timely. How do we set up our workforce in an integrated way? How do we bring about meaningful change for those we serve? How do we move from rhetoric to reality?

As a policy professional working in the housing association sector in Wales, I’m keenly interested in all of the above. I was recently invited, on behalf of Community Housing Cymru, to contribute to Welsh Government’s “Making Prudent Healthcare Happen” online resource, which is a collection of essays exploring the challenges and opportunities of this new way of working.

The services provided by housing associations, in terms of high quality housing, care and support services, community initiatives, employment and skills, and digital inclusion, are but some examples of the broad work taking place to improve health and work to reduce the number of people requiring the services of their GP or local A&E. The housing association sector and people working within it are able to provide legitimate solutions to the mounting challenges faced by the NHS and, more broadly, public services in Wales.

Housing associations work in some of the most deprived communities in Wales. When we think about how we work as public facing services to combat factors such as unemployment, education, and inactivity which we know have a substantial impact on health and wellbeing, housing associations are a key part of the formula for addressing such issues.

But the carpet is being pulled from underneath us as a housing sector. Salami slicing cuts to vital services such as the Supporting People Programme are threatening to further push people into NHS services who may otherwise have received a preventative, person centred service at a far earlier stage.

The Welsh Government budget for 2015/16 confirmed a £10m cut to Supporting People, reducing it to £124m. In real terms, this means that over 4,000 people will now go without the support they could have accessed if the fund were protected. The £10m cut is the equivalent of annual funding to provide all services for men and women at risk of domestic abuse and young people with support needs in the Vale and Cardiff. In addition, supporting people services provide a well-used referral route for hospital move-on teams, freeing up hospital beds and resources.

At a time when we need a strong “prevention sector” in Wales, we cannot afford an environment of disinvestment that undervalues the key work of organisations delivering Supporting People services.

Although the prudent healthcare work demonstrates the value, the opportunities and the enthusiasm for things to change, these words mean nothing without action from all sides.

If through prudent healthcare we’re entrusting people to look after themselves and to make positive health behaviours part of their regular habits, then it’s also vital to trust the ability of the housing association sector to support and work closely with the NHS in meeting the challenges it faces both now and in the future.

In our recent economic impact report you can see some case studies (p16-18) which demonstrate the prudent nature of the housing associations sector. Taff Housing addressing delayed transfer of care, and Melin Homes working with a collaborative to re-invent Continuing Healthcare packages in Gwent. Consistency is key, however, and we will know we are on the right track once we are able to call projects such as these common practice rather than best.

Matt Kennedy
Policy Officer: Care, Support and Health  

Winter is coming...

Jon Snow knew much of the perils that lurked in the coming winter. With his battle-hardened peers in the Night’s Watch, he could see from the wall, and through forays beyond, the danger that made its home in the cold and ice. But, apart from a bad case of frostbite, what did Jon Snow and those around him suffer as a result of? Well, a lack of shared ownership of the problem, poor collaboration and, as the issues intensified, a failure to use dwindling resources in a different, more efficient way.

You wouldn’t find many of us looking pensively into the distance, muttering 'winter is coming' during August. But, let’s face it, he had the right idea. We should have a joint sense of urgency, readiness and understanding of the challenges unique to this time of year.

Outside the world of  'Game of Thrones', the statistics around fuel poverty and winter deaths are sobering. In 2012, 30% of households in Wales (386,000 households) were estimated to be in fuel poverty. This is the equivalent to 54,000 more households than in 2008. Rising fuel prices have largely been counteracted by the increases in income and energy efficiency savings in the housing stock, and this has led to the increase in the number of fuel poor households.

Fuel poverty is a significant cause of excess winter deaths and, in 2012/13, there were 1,900 excess winter deaths in Wales. This was a 32% fall from the previous winter, which had seen the highest number since 1999/2000, but still above the 10 year average. 89% of these deaths involved people aged 65 or over, with the highest rate amongst those over 85 who constituted nearly 60% of the total.

There is much being done in an attempt to reduce these figures. For example, Care & Repair Cymru works with older people across Wales to support them to live in warm, safe and secure homes. This work is continued throughout the year; however, it is particularly pertinent heading toward the winter months. This year, Care & Repair agencies are offering free winter warm packs, containing a blanket and hot water bottle. These packs help to promote Care & Repair agencies as a service to help older people prepare for and manage safely through the winter.

Housing associations are doing much to offset the impact of fuel poverty, including:

• Improving the energy efficiency of homes through the Welsh Housing Quality Standard and energy programmes such as Arbed
• Helping tenants maximise their income through projects such as the Your Benefits are Changing (YBAC) campaign. YBAC helps tenants to claim benefits they are entitled to. One area of success has been the identification of the Warm Home Discount - YBAC last year successfully assisted over 914 people to claim a rebate which equates to an annual sum of £127,960. 
• Helping to try to negate energy price increases through such actions as behavioural change for energy use. 

Across public services, the impacts of winter are likely to be felt more profoundly in the Welsh NHS. Winter preparedness is a key task for Health Boards, and a hot topic within the media and public sphere. But it’s important, particularly now in the context of prudent healthcare, that we all take responsibility as individuals and organisations to meeting the winter challenge.

In terms of working with housing associations:

• Creating capacity for step down accommodation in Extra Care and Sheltered Housing
• Placing housing professionals within hospital discharge teams to decrease delayed transfer of care
• Working with housing associations to facilitate and coordinate community activity during the winter months
• Partnering to ensure that advice and information is accessible in a range of community settings and media formats. 

Of course, this should all rightly go beyond what we plan as organisations and a mix of services. Last year, Public Health England called for 100,000 people to check on neighbours over the winter months.

We should be using this time to reignite our sense of community, decrease loneliness and isolation during months when these may be felt more profoundly and together contribute to managing the demand on GP or A&E service during these months. Everyone can help, from championing local services, clearing roads, communal snowman building, committing your long term future to the Night’s Watch – it’s the small gestures that will truly make a difference this Christmas. It could put a smile on someone’s face, it could save a life.

Matthew Kennedy
Policy Officer: Care, Support and Health

Positive ageing - bucking the trend?

This week is Positive Ageing Week, which also includes Older People’s Day today, (1 October). The narrative around ageing and particularly around the substantial increase in the number of older people in the coming decades is often focused on the challenges of increasing demand for services and the fact that, across public services, we aren’t ready to accommodate this need.

At Care & Repair’s recent Annual Conference, a consultant from Powys Teaching Health Board (Prof. Bim Bhowmick) spoke about caring for older people with more acute needs in the community. One of his main points, which really resonated with me, was in saying that an increase in the older population doesn’t have to mean greater demand… more need… pressure on hospital services. He’d been leading on a consultant led “virtual ward” service aimed at keeping older people out of hospital. Through this he demonstrated a few things, namely:

• Consultant-led community services for older people will reduce attendance at A&E and instances of delayed transfer of care.
• Services configured to intervene at the time, before someone is admitted to hospital for further checks etc., is by far the most important time to intervene. 
• Ensuring that there's an understanding of what can be provided in the community by NHS staff and other stakeholders is key for General Practitioners. 
• The home is often an appropriate place to provide interventions for people with acute needs. 
• If we make these changes on an all-Wales level, we can realise a future where even though there’s a large population of older people, better service focus along with changes in lifestyle and behaviour can combine to offset the type of demand being predicted at present. 

The way we understand housing in the context of positive ageing is also very important. All too often this is a bit one dimensional – along the lines of poor housing leads to poor health. Clearly this is a really important part of understanding the impact housing can have, and the implications of poor housing. But an over-focus on the physical environment may lead us to overlook much of what it means to age positively. Housing certainly underpins this, but (for example) opportunities to socialise, learn new skills, inform and participate in local and national debate, spend more time with family, work or volunteer and travel the world can all have a huge bearing on how 'positively' we age. 

For the housing sector, it’s about understanding how we can best support this shift in emphasis and if there’s capacity to provide staff, share expertise or facilitate patient, carer or family engagement in building a shared understanding of how we support people in truly holistic way. 

Matthew Kennedy
Policy Officer: Care, Support and Health

Prudent healthcare - a new approach

On a sunny afternoon in July 2013 we held our first Health & Housing conference – celebrating the 65th Birthday of the NHS. Housing associations have and continue to be vital partners of the health service. This year we broaden the scope and equally the message - health, housing and social care - doing the right thing at the right time.

It’s fair to say the last year has been a trying time for the NHS with high profile inquiries into standards of care, ambulances queuing outside hospital doors, and difficulties for most local health boards in balancing their books. On the flip side we've also seen an NHS that has taken action to change how services are delivered, engaged with political scrutiny on various areas of work and continued to deliver excellent levels of care to people in Wales.

That's not to paint over the cracks; there are clearly challenges around increasing demand and dwindling resources. Housing associations can and many are already helping to reduce this demand. The good news is that the links are simple, worryingly simple in fact, and as housing associations we need our health board colleagues to sit up and take notice when we say we can help with respite care, reducing delayed transfer of care and providing preventative services - which means people not turning up at their GP surgery, or their hospital A&E service.

At CHC we’ve worked with members to highlight the massive impact housing associations have on the health and wellbeing of the individuals and communities they work with. It really is about more than bricks and mortar. Housing associations have become experts at working closely with tenants, community regeneration and providing innovative care services.

Local health boards in Wales have taken advantage of these links in some areas as we highlight in the briefing launched at today's conference - Partnerships to deliver the NHS required now and in the future.

This publication doesn't pull any punches; it rightly doesn’t water down messages but highlights that there is highly positive work and projects taking place – but we can and must do more. As organisations and sectors, we serve people with multiple needs through a wide range of services and there are clearly opportunities to better coordinate how services are delivered by the right person at the right time.

Prudent Healthcare ushers in a new approach to providing healthcare which places the individual at the heart of service delivery, with responsibility on services to do only what is necessary and for individuals to take responsibility for their own health behaviours. In terms of the future of how health and housing work together, there should be no mistake that we are central to this approach - prudency is after all at the heart of what housing associations do.

Matt Kennedy
Policy Officer: Care, Support and Health 

Homeless prevention - at the heart of what we do

In the summer of 2013, Community Housing Cymru commissioned research in partnership with the WLGA, funded by Welsh Government, to explore the opportunity for greater collaboration between housing associations and local authorities.

Reflecting on this, it's fair to say that the research challenges the sector and local authorities by, to some extent, putting the writing on the wall over what works and what doesn't. It highlights some issues around consistency, roles and responsibility and some contrasting priorities. But it also demonstrates the high volume of innovative projects that local authorities and housing associations have worked on together in using housing stock and the generally positive relationships that exist between housing associations and local authorities in Wales.

The workshop sessions conducted for the research revealed that some local authorities are concerned that with increasing pressure on housing association rental income, this will increasingly become the focus of business. It's important that we put such concerns to rest.

We've always said we're more about bricks and mortar and we've consistently shown this to be the case - you just need to look at the regeneration, innovative care provision, financial and digital inclusion initiatives, employment and skills projects provided by the sector to understand what housing associations are about. It's more than tackling homelessness - for our members it's about supporting individuals to build fulfilling, rewarding lives.

We know that Supporting People funding will also continue to be an important part of how we provide accommodation and support and the new collaborative arrangements which drive how this funding is used should be an opportunity to build and spread the highly positive practice that exists, much of which is highlighted in the report.

Welfare reform continues to be a shadow over the sector which, in the context of homelessness, undermines the ability of local authorities to house individuals quickly and reduce demand on temporary accommodation due to the 'bedroom tax'.

CHC will continue to challenge and support our members to deliver more, and explore new ways of delivering projects to meet increasing demand on both our own and other sectors. It's clear that the homelessness challenge facing Wales will continue to require dynamic thinking from housing, health, the third sector and Welsh Government to drive improvement in how we do things. It’s true that public services in many instances have no option but to change, so if we can’t control that then we should seek to control how we change in an informed way. This research is a stepping stone to doing that in the context of homelessness.

You can read the full report here.


Matt Kennedy
Policy Officer: Care, Support and Health

Living Longer, Ageing Well?

The fact that we have an ageing population has been well established and is rightly something we should be celebrating and embracing fully. The often uneasy elephant in the room is the simple truth that services aren’t geared up to serve an ageing population in the same way as they do at the moment. 

Information is readily available which reflects the increasing life expectancies people can expect to experience in the coming decades and beyond. Relating to Healthy Life Expectancy, the Office for National Statistics reports that boys born in Wales between 2008 and 2010, who are expected to live to the age of 77.5, are estimated to spend 63 years in good health. Similarly, girls born in Wales between 2008 and 2012 can expect to live 63 of their estimated 81.7 years of life in good health. So this should make up a key part of our thinking now as well as considering the impacts on future generations living well in to their 80s and 90s.

We’re left with a situation whereby an increasing amount of people will require care services of some sort. It is vital that we seize the opportunity (as many are already doing) to really listen to older people and work collaboratively to provide services that can serve a number of their central needs from health and housing to education and transport.

Working with this holistic mentality to provision will go some way towards creating the opportunity for the latter years of a person’s lifetime to be some of the most rewarding, fulfilling and enriching.  

Matt Kennedy
Policy Officer: Care, Support and Community Health
CHC Group