Our Housing First service is available across Midlothian Council. The service aims to work to Housing First principles and offers a Midlothian specific version of Housing First.
The team work to move people out of homelessness and into settled, permanent accommodation, with flexible support focused on dealing with a range of issues, such as harm reduction, mental health, finance, health, education, and family relationships.
Contrary to common understanding, Housing First is not a self-contained support service. Housing First works to facilitate the continued, intensive and flexible support of a range of support services, such as Drug and Alcohol, Mental Health and Community Health, Employability, Criminal Justice and other agencies to provide specialist support that is tailored around a person remaining in their own home.
Our Housing First Service in Midlothian is available to all Midlothian Council residents. Referrals are made via a multi-disciplinary team. People accessing the service may have experienced relationship breakdown and trauma, domestic abuse, have acute mental health needs and/or require support with their substance use. Often, people referred to the service have had previous struggles with managing their tenancy.
Housing First aims to ensure people have a stable place to call home, and support is provided on a ‘whatever it takes’ approach to support the maintenance of that home. Over time, and with elastic tolerance from agencies, people can begin to engage in support related to their needs.
The service is designed around trauma-informed practice, and the staff team works to harm reduction principles.
The service usually works with people Monday to Friday; however, Housing First is flexible to an individual’s circumstances.
Our staff team is led day to day by a Senior Support Worker. We have a staff team of 2 who work across Midlothian to provide a responsive, flexible service.
Our team works hard to maximise independence and to support community engagement. The team will work with partner agencies regularly, and will provide a mixture of direct support as well as coordinating the input of allied agencies.
Accessing Housing First is via Midlothian Council.
If you feel you would benefit from Housing First, please contact Midlothian Council, your social worker or other professional, who can make an onward referral.
If you are a professional interested in the work of Housing First, you can make a referral via the Housing Team at Midlothian Council. It is important to note that Housing First is a complementary service that works in addition to the continued involvement of allied professional agencies.
To find out more about our care and support services, please browse our website.
If you are interested in working at Housing First, or at one of our other services, please visit our recruitment page to see a list of the current vacancies.
