More than putting a roof over people’s heads
Cardiff-based Cadwyn Housing Association is an organisation that consistently goes the extra mile offering a wide range of housing services above and beyond the traditional remit of the social landlord
Established in 1972 Cadwyn manages over 1,400 homes in the social and private sector and provides a range of services including hostels for the homeless.
Cadwyn started to look at homelessness prevention several years ago, by working with existing tenants to make sure people get the right advice. “It is not just about ending up as homeless and knocking on the council’s door and saying I need somewhere to live,” says chief executive, Chris O’Meara. “It is about how we work with people to reduce debt, overcome wider problems and increase opportunities. Hopefully to prevent homelessness in the first place”.
Cadwyn provides an in-house welfare benefits service and works closely with the local Credit Union. It is also contributing to a community development finance institution, which is currently being set up to provide loans to people who may be classed as high risk.
Among its housing stock is Nightingale House, a hostel which accommodates 28 families. Produced from a partnership with Cardiff City Council, the hostel has helped 300 families since opening three years ago. “It is very high quality homelessness accommodation with all family rooms having their own en-suites and kitchen facilities,” explains O’Meara. “And one of the family rooms has been adapted for wheelchair use.”
Nightingale House also offers a Halal kitchen, a créche, TV lounge, and an IT suite where formal training is offered. Wi-fi connections are fitted throughout the hostel and families can use laptops in their rooms as well as in formal learning situations.
Cadwyn has hostels catering for a variety of needs including single homeless people, those with challenging behaviour, people recovering from
drug and alcohol misuse, vulnerable mothers and children and those with learning difficulties.
As well as its hostels Cadwyn has a significant stock of general needs housing and an active new build programme.
Cadwyn is currently waiting for approval from the Welsh Assembly Government to start work on a family housing project that meets level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes.
“It will be the first code level 4 we have done,” explains O’Meara. “But our schemes to date have been code level 3 so this scheme will bring together our experience and help to achieve a higher standard”.
Work is also being done to make the existing housing stock more environmentally friendly. Cadwyn is well on its way to meeting the Welsh Quality Standard by 2012, but in addition to the standard improvement works it is piloting a system to establish what needs to be done to existing stock to meet the challenge of climate change.
“This is not just in terms of energy efficiency but also recycling and wider sustainability,” explains O’Meara. “We will have the results of that in a couple of months which will help us to plan our budget for the future.”
As a member of the Integrate consortium all of the housing association’s procurement work is done through the framework agreement. However reactive maintenance is carried out by its in-house repairs team, Cadywn Works. “Doing the repairs in-house means that we get better service and more control,” explains O’Meara.
As well as managing its housing stock Cadwyn Housing Association also operates a letting and leasing scheme.
Cadwyn has 100 properties on the books for its leasing scheme, which re-houses homeless families and is run in partnership with Cardiff Council.
Housing for single people who have moved out of hostels is provided by the lettings agency. “Once people have had the support to get their lives
back to where they need to be they are often reluctant to go back into the private sector so we take the sting out of that by managing and maintaining the properties under agency agreements with the private sector,” explains O’Meara. The Wales Audit Office’s recent inspection of Cadwyn highlighted its very strong commitment to tenant involvement.
Five tenants are members of the Board and there a number of tenant social groups, which interface with different parts of the organisation. “We have people attending meetings with contractors about progress on site, tenant groups that look at the quality of new build, tenants publishing the newsletter, tenant quizzes and coffee mornings, a whole range of ways that people can get involved,” says O’Meara.
It is not just the welfare of tenants that is a high priority for Cadwyn, it also prides itself on being a good place to work.
Cadwyn was accredited by the Sunday Times in its Best Companies list in 2008, is Charter Marked, has got Investors In People status and recently received the Rainbow Mark, which aims to bridge the gap between the housing needs of lesbian, gay and bisexual people. It has also applied for Green Dragon Environmental status.
While Cadywn recognises the importance of good staff, it also knows that progress can only be made if the right systems and processes are in place and uses a systems thinking approach to ensure that it gets the most out of its resources.
“It involves getting all of the staff involved in the process of stripping everything right back and challenging each other about why you need to do the things you do,” explains O’Meara. “It is empowering staff.”
O’Meara believes that the secret to the organisation’s success is the fact that it is a community organisation “We work very hard at the relationships that we create with all of our stakeholders and I think that is what pays dividends. We have got our ears to the ground and can sort problems out quickly,” she says. “We hear about the opportunities because we are in the right places and we talk to the right people and we care very much about the quality that we provide.
“Part of being a small organisation is that you have got to punch above your weight, you have to demonstrate that even if you are small you are up there with the bigger ones and that is very important to our culture.”
