To receive a verbal update from the Head of Housing and Health
Minutes:
The Committee received and NOTED a verbal update from Head of Housing and Health on Mid Devon District Council being a Trauma Informed Council.
The following was highlighted in the update:
· Recognising the impact of traumatic experiences, often when a child, and noting what those people went on to do.
· Drivers
· Trauma – what was it?
· How did it affect the lives of those that experienced it?
· The training for Councillors on this subject was estimated to cost £20,000 three years ago, then Covid prevented the training and subsequently there had not been the funds available for the training as a discretionary piece of work.
· Within the Community Safety Partnership the Council was working with other agencies on this subject.
· The Anti-Social Behaviour Relief Panel approach was an example of the Council being “Trauma informed”.
· The Serious Violence Strategy was in itself mandated by the Government that, the Council had to take a preventative Public Health approach to serious violence, not just the crime, there had to be an understanding as to what was causing it, the public health approach had led to a number or priorities in that strategy which were “trauma informed” and a number of other county level agencies were getting involved.
· Corporate Parenting response.
· Frontline Housing/Housing Options team had all been trained and were ”trauma informed” .
· The Homes Policy Development Group were looking into hoarding, with a view to looking at tenant vulnerability and why they were hoarding, to avoid the tenant commencing hoarding all over again after the initial problem was cleared.
· The mantle for the Trauma Informed work had been passed to the Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion Group.
Discussion took place with regards to:
· Success at Teignbridge District Council where the emphasis was on Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) where they measured the number of interventions and the percentage rate of re-offending.
· Mid Devon District Council had started to look at the levels of hoarding and would be in a position to measure whether the intervention had been a success after a year.
· The measurement of outcomes could only take place at the end of an intervention.
· Suggestion that this work was put through the Economy and Assets Policy Development Group (PDG) and encourage them to think about those measures so that the Council could justify resources being spent on them.
· Whether there would be a greater in-depth report and whether it could come back to the Community, People and Equalities PDG? – The mandate had been taken up by the Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion group and they could bring it to the Community, People and Equalities PDG as a Community Safety Report.
· Whether the Council had the relevant skill sets within the officer teams? The training was focussed towards those officers who had a lot of dealings with vulnerable and complex clients. Going forward the Council would continue to invest in that training. Often the team worked with other agencies who were more highly trained than they were.
· General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) The Council already had fairly strict understandings about protecting people’s personal information. Recently there had been a case elsewhere in Devon where somebody had died and, had agencies exchanged information better, then that person may have been saved. Some agencies hid behind GDPR regulations and yet the legislation sat above those regulations and there should have been greater information sharing.