Agreed Principles of the Single Agency Assessment Process

These principles have been established and agreed by the Kent JPPB (Housing) Single Agency Assessment Monitoring and Review Group.

Referrals

• A Single Agency Assessment should be used where a service user requires re-housing due to a health/support need that cannot be met in, or is being exacerbated by, their current accommodation.
• The Single Agency Assessment is designed to be used by statutory partner agencies and their agents, which for the purposes of the SAA are agreed as:
• Social Services – all teams, including Children and Families (including their agencies), Rainer 16plus, Adult teams and joint health and social services Learning Disability Teams
• Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust  Community Mental Health Teams (In-take, Enhanced and CAT)
• Primary Care Trusts – health staff including Health Visitors, Midwives, District Nurses and GPs.
• Acute Hospital Trusts – Including all medical staff from K&C, QEQM, William Harvey and Medway Maritime.
• Occupational Therapists – Hospital and Social Services
• Youth Offending Service
• Probation
• Kent Council on Addiction (KCA) on behalf of Kent Drug and Alcohol Action Team (KDAAT).

• All service users referred via a Single Agency Assessment must also have a current Housing Register application.

Processing

• The receipt of all SAAs will be acknowledged and the local housing authority will endeavour to contact the referrer when the applicant is offered accommodation. The address of the accommodation will be made known to the referrer.
• The receiving authority will assess each SAA; any that do not meet the criteria will not be accepted. If the authority does not consider that the referrer has awarded the right priority rating, this can be altered but only after discussing it with the referrer.
• If an inappropriate SAA is received the referrer will be contacted in order that an explanation is given as to why it is not appropriate and advising of how the application will be dealt with.
• All ‘high’ rated SAAs will be given the highest possible priority under the receiving authority’s Lettings/Allocations Policy.

Ongoing Training

• Each local authority operating the SAA commits to provide on going training to their local agencies and to be proactive in doing so.

Monitoring and Review

• The Joint Planning Manager must provide a six monthly monitoring report on the SAA to the Kent JPPB (Housing).

Data Collection

• Data from the SAAs received each quarter is supplied by each district to the Joint Planning Manager in an agreed spreadsheet format. This allows the data to be interrogated and statistics produced, which then inform future planning processes.

Housing Options Team

E-mail:

housing@thanet.gov.uk

Tel: 01843 577277

Fax: 01843 291097