Oxford City Council - ENLIGHT Housing Needs

As an Enhanced Housing Options Trailblazer, Oxford City Council has been developing innovative ways of helping people solve housing, work and money problems together.
 
Clients who call in to the Housing Options team with a housing problem are also asked questions to identify what else in their life they would want to change. If they want to work but have no job, what have been the barriers to work? Is training required, or is it a matter of confidence? Are there childcare issues to resolve? Is health an issue? Does the client believe they are better off on benefits than in work?
 
Depending on whether the customer agrees or disagrees with a series of statements, the adviser is able to connect quickly to a range of resources designed to supply appropriate holistic support. These resources vary from in-work benefits and incentives, to local training schemes or childcare solutions.

A natural extension to existing guidance

Oxford City Council has enjoyed using their own tailored version of ENLIGHT – Destin’s Online Procedure Manual – since early 2008.
 
The Manual brings together, in an easy-to-use format, the tools and resources that Oxford’s Housing Needs team use on a daily basis. This includes the relevant legislation, case law, Codes of Guidance, procedures and local housing options. All this information is interlinked by an experienced housing consultant, so that it is easy and quick to use.
 
Now, ENLIGHT has been extended to support Oxford’s joined-up approach to homelessness and its root causes. At interview, advisers can quickly access the customer questionnaire, and depending on the responses, can click through to topics containing targeted advice, ‘phone numbers and referral information, to ensure the client has the best chance of achieving their desired life goals.
 
Information to take away
 
The advice given is supported by a range of short leaflets, and advisers can print these off as and when they are required, cutting down on unnecessary printing. Customers can take away specifically targeted information.
 
Dave Scholes, Oxford City Council’s Housing Needs Manager, comments: ‘Providing a consistent service is vital for us. We have always liked the way that our ENLIGHT Manual provides a single port of call for staff dealing with traditional housing advice. It saves us all precious time by helping us to drill down to the information we need straight away. By integrating our new wider toolkit of support for our customers, we now have an efficient way of providing a truly enhanced service. Since the service is constantly developing, we also have the flexibility of arranging changes – so the ENLIGHT Manual is also future-proofed.’
 
Now there's system user guidance too!
 
The increasing complexity of Oxford's enhanced housing options service needs to be supported by a flexible IT system. Oxford use Northgate HMIS, a system which is highly configurable.
 
In order to ensure staff get the best use out of the system, Oxford needed detailed (but simple) system user guidance. Destin developed this for Oxford.
 
 Dave Scholes continues:

' We want to use the Northgate System more and more to support our day-to-day activities, because it's a way of becoming more efficient. That means we are constantly tweaking the configuration, and it is hard for staff to keep up, even if they have worked with us since we bought the system.

Destin's knowledge of modern IT systems, coupled with their long experience of working in housing, enabled them to produce a superb guide really quickly and cost-effectively. We loved the idea that Destin will make sure that changes are properly reflected. Using Destin was a no-brainer for us.'

Dave Scholes, Oxford’s Housing Needs Manager