Supporting legal literacy across social care and housing: Practice Tool (2023)

Legal literacy empowers individuals outside the legal profession about issues involving the law. As such, it has been identified as a key contributor to successful social care practice (Braye et al., 2014). Supporting legal literacy at the interface of social care and housing enables practitioners from these specialisms to understand the relevant frameworks, powers and duties which may be applicable when working with families who have overlapping housing and social care needs.

A limited understanding of the legal and policy frameworks of other departments can lead to unrealistic expectations of what other services can offer, and even unintended consequences for families. Legally literate decision-making can help to ensure that the implementation of law or policy by one department (in relation to housing allocation, for example) does not have detrimental impacts on the work of another (in relation to family wellbeing or reunification, for example).

Ensuring that statutory support is aligned across departments requires housing and social care professionals to be both knowledgeable about legislation and government guidance, and able to interpret and apply this knowledge accurately and ethically in complex situations.

This is a quick-read version of the Supporting legal literacy across social care and housing: Practice Tool (2023), which highlights its key messages. To gain a greater understanding of the topic you can download and read the full tool, which includes references.

This practice tool is designed to be used by practitioners in the course of their daily work, to help them support and advocate confidently for families with whom they work. It can also be used by teams engaged in reflective practice, as part of training or supervision, or by strategic leaders to assess, and potentially redress, gaps in legal literacy across housing and social care in their local authority.

The tool sets out five family scenarios, in which the presence or absence of legal literacy across housing and social care can directly impact the outcomes for families. The scenarios encourage practitioners to consider which legal options they might utilise – and to identify any areas to develop their own existing legal literacy.

The scenarios explore:

• Opportunities to prevent homelessness and family breakdown
• Aligning housing and support interventions for parents/carers separated from their children
• Working holistically with families in situations of domestic violence and abuse (DVA)
• Supporting families subject to restrictive immigration controls
• Housing entitlements, options and support for care experienced young people

The resource supports practitioners to consider the relevance of the Housing Act (1996), Homelessness Reduction Act (2017), the Children Act (1989), the Care Act (2014), the Equality Act (2010) and the Human Rights Act (1998) to real-life scenarios. Reflective questions encourage readers to consider legally literate support interventions for families, which take account of both housing and social care concerns.

The practice tool was generated through the Families and Home Change Project. This project was established in response to growing awareness in research and practitioner communities that while the housing and social care needs of families are often interrelated, efforts to support them can be fragmented across sectors that do not always work closely together, sometimes resulting in conflicting policy and practice. The Change Project brought together key stakeholders from each area to formulate responses, solutions and tools to support joint working across these statutory services. The practice tool complements the other Research in Practice resources, as available below.

Part of the Families and homes change project.