Case Study - Sunderland Housing Group

Social landlords inspire Community Kids

Sunderland Housing Group is a registered social landlord that provides local schools with the citizenship programme ‘Community Kids’. The programme, aimed at 10–11 year olds, has proved a beneficial investment against enviro-crime.

Sunderland Housing Group doesn’t see stock transfer as simply being about homes. An important part of their work is in social investment. They work closely with communities, schools, voluntary groups and partner agencies to support community development and create opportunities in health, education and employment.

One example of this is the Community Kids programme with local schools, which has reached more than 5,000 year 6 pupils.

"We were originally looking at tackling adults’ anti-social behaviour, but realised that it was kids causing it. We spent a lot of time chasing kids and taught them for example that it is wrong to write their names on someone’s wall. So we wrote a list on what a good kid should look like." - Elaine Murray, Social Investment Manager at Sunderland Housing Group

Five steps

This developed into a copyrighted programme, which is sold to other housing associations. The citizenship programme asks kids to take five steps towards becoming a community kid. These steps involve respecting themselves, other people and the environment.

The scheme began in 1999, ran in five schools until 2003, and was then extended to cover the whole city. Community Kids runs over eight weeks with each session lasting for 45 minutes.

The academic year 2006-07 some 40 schools are participating in the programme, which forms part of the curriculum. Last year saw some 25 schools take part. The programme has been well received by headteachers as schools have to include citizenship on their agenda.

"Why shouldn’t housing associations deliver the programme as that is where the kids live. Once schools close at 3.30pm our customers suffer from antisocial behaviour." - Elaine Murray

Flexible programme

Sunderland Housing Group has noticed the importance of keeping the programme fairly flexible and including important topics as they come up. When the programme first started, there was nothing on asylum, but now it is an important feature. The programme also adapts to the questions that the children ask.

"The aim is to create sustainable communities by investing in people. We are dealing with old problems from a new angle and making the community benefit from it. Also, we educate our future customers – so it’s an investment if they turn away from vandalism. The course can really influence their behaviour." - Elaine Murray

Funding

The programme is funded by Sunderland Housing Group by using existing resources and existing staff. Fifty trained and police-checked housing officers deliver the programme during school hours.

Each year, teachers, children and Group staff review how the programme has gone and make suggestions for improvements. The Group is now looking into involving parents too. There is also an annual Community Kids conference – last year David Miliband was one of the speakers.

Sunderland Housing Group is committed to running the programme for another five years.

Providing customer service

The council tenants of Sunderland set in motion the creation of the Group with their 88 per cent vote in favour of transferring the council’s housing stock of around 36,356 homes to the newly created set of registered social landlords.

The Group promised to keep annual rent increases to one per cent above inflation, to catch up on the backlog of repairs and to modernise homes to a high standard. They also promised to give tenants more say in how things were done and to improve on services for customers.

Around 15,000 homes have now been fully modernised and tenants have also kept their rights to buy their home with discount. More than 3,000 tenants have bought their houses, enabling them to own a home in an improving neighbourhood. Decisions are made by local boards and the main Group board. Tenants hold a third of the seats on these boards alongside local councillors and independents.

The Group has also developed customer focus groups, which involve staff and customers working together to look at new ways of providing and improving services.

For more information, please contact Elaine Murray on 0191 525 5934 or at elaine.murray@sunderlandhousing.co.uk