This study explores the implementation and impact of Supporting People, a policy of the New Labour and Coalition governments of 1997 to the present designed to provide housing related support to those considered vulnerable. The theoretical framework uses concepts from past studies of implementation, policy networks, governmentality, path dependency, other temporal concepts and a recent heuristic that provides an independent framework for analysing policy success. This conceptual framework was used in exploring the history of care and support services in the UK; assessing the successes and failures of the past. The study then looks at the drivers and policy goals for Supporting People and at some of the key reviews and studies of it thus far. The fieldwork uses a “mixed methods” approach utilising both quantitative and qualitative methods. An initial survey gathered views from a range of supported housing professionals, followed by a series of in-depth interviews with management practitioners from Supporting People funded organisations. Both stages utilised ideas from the conceptual framework in asking about implementation processes and successes and failures of the programme. This section also explores the use of evidence, dissemination and impact. In terms of the Supporting People policy, the study found a number of areas of strengths on which to build e.g. increased funding and improved strategic frameworks, but also many areas of weakness that require improvement. These include protection for funding, consistency across local authorities, fragmented structures of related policy networks and the top-down implementation style of the policy – there were lessons from No Second Night Out (NSNO) – Leicester in this regard. This was a piece of evaluative research carried out in tandem with the main study and integrated into it. The study found a consistent failure to provide adequate services for vulnerable people; services had failed to build up sufficient path dependent processes to protect them from funding and other resources being diverted to other priorities. The lack of a legislative and conceptual consensus around what it means to be “well housed” was key.

Housing support is a service offered by municipalities in Sweden which aim to help people with psychiatric and/or neuropsychiatric disabilities to manage their daily lives, often in their own home. Housing support workers therefore have an important role in supporting people with psychiatric and/or neuropsychiatric disabilities. In certain municipalities in Sweden, housing support with a family-oriented approach has been implemented to help parents with parenthood and to structure their everyday lives with the family as a whole. This study aims to examine the possibilities and challenges that housing support workers face in their work with parents and families receiving family-oriented housing support. A further aim with this study is to understand the conditions that are created during interaction and in relations between the housing support workers and the parents, utilizing an analytical framework derived from concepts within the theory of social responsiveness. The method used in this study is based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with housing support workers working with a family-oriented approach. The empirical data has been analyzed through a thematic analysis, resulting in three main themes to present the result and analysis. The findings of this study show that there are both possibilities and challenges with their work taking place in the family's home environment, such as being where the everyday problems are being manifested, but also handling other family members. Results also show that housing support workers within a family-oriented approach deal with a bigger network as they have to manage the family as a whole. Other challenges were about keeping boundaries between their professional role and being seen as a friend or family member. The main result of this study is that social interaction and relation between the housing support worker and the parent that receives housing support is substantial and inevitable.