During this year BCS added The Supportive Tenancy Service to its suite of housing programs. The Supportive Tenancy Service operates as a partnership between Woden Community Service, the YWCA of Canberra and Belconnen Community Service. Each organisation is responsible for delivering the service in specific locations, with BCS covering the Belconnen and Gungahlin areas.
BCS Supportive Tenancy employees are located in the Central Access Point in Nature Conservation House. This co-location with First Point and Housing ACT provides a common access point for people who are experiencing housing stress to receive relevant support from the service that best meets their circumstances. The Central Access Point is a new innovation and BCS is very happy to involved in the development of a streamlined service delivery option that hopefully makes accessing relevant and timely supports easier for people who need them.
The Supportive Tenancy Service, provides outreach support to people in housing stress, or who may have an ‘at risk’ tenancy regardless of the reason for their circumstances, it is open to all households including public and private tenants and home owners. The service will also provide opportunities to expand knowledge, enhance skills, access resources and build connections to communities.
HomeBase continues to provide early intervention support to families who are at risk of losing their accommodation. Assistance is provided to families to stabilise their housing whether this is private rental, public housing or their own homes (mortgages) and financial circumstances. HomeBase works with families in a holistic way, ie, staff work with all members of the family on the full range of their identified needs.
A central aim of HomeBase’s support is to strengthen families’ resilience with a view to preventing future housing stress and instability and to improve other aspects of their lives such as family relationships, health and well-being within the family, parenting, managing money and budgets, education, employment, and developing connections to their local communities.
Families have also direct access to a Centrelink Social Worker, a member of the HomeBase Team. This ensures that immediate assistance is available to ensure that correct entitlements are being received and that any other issues in relation to payments and/or debts, for example, are addressed.