Perth and Kinross Council’s housing support service has received excellent praise in a report from the Care Inspectorate.
This followed an unannounced inspection in March.
All three areas assessed by the inspector, quality of care and support, quality of staffing and quality of management and leadership were ranked as “excellent”- the highest rating available.
The service provides support to homeless people or people threatened with homelessness. To help assess the service, people who were using or have used the service were among those interviewed by the inspector.
The inspection report said: “Perth and Kinross Council homeless housing support service provides an excellent service to homeless people.
“The staff team are committed to providing a high level of support to service users and are continually developing innovative ways to involve people and to develop the service.
“There was excellent evidence that staff are well-trained and motivated and had good knowledge of national care standards, legislation and best practice.”
The inspector also noted that service users were encouraged and enabled to participate in assessing and improving their care and support.
It said that service users are “actively involved in the development and review of the service in a wide variety of meaningful ways, and their opinions, views and ideas are regularly sought and are clearly valued.”
Perth and Kinross Council’s housing and health convener, Councillor Dave Doogan, said: “I’m delighted that our housing support service has received the highest grade possible following this unannounced visit from the Care Inspectorate.
“Becoming homeless is a very traumatic experience for people, and it can happen to anyone. We have very well-trained staff who offer the right support to people to lessen that trauma as much as we can.
“Our staff help them find suitable accommodation as quickly as possible, and also give people the right skills to enable them to sustain a tenancy which is very important.”
He added: “Our staff work closely with service users to ensure that we can continue to develop and improve our services. This excellent inspection report is down to the hard work and commitment of staff and service users, and I would like to pass on my congratulations and thanks to them.”
