We’ve introduced Structure Telephone Counselling to our Tenant Support and Wellbeing Service this year

Two years ago, we launched our Tenant Support and Wellbeing Service for our customers.

The service is available 24/7 and is free and confidential for customers to use. The service offers help with anything, including mental health and wellbeing, family matters, relationships, managing debt, workplace issues and rights as a consumer.

It is delivered by Care First which means that we don’t know who has accessed the service and what for – and the service now also offers our customers Structured Telephone Counselling too.

Through the Structured Telephone Counselling customers will have access to six telephone sessions.

Previously the telephone counselling sessions were only available for short-term ‘in the moment’ issues. This meant that a single call to offer support for an issue was all our customers were entitled to.

This is now being increased to planned and structured counselling that will be available for individuals who call the service. It will help to provide a way for our customers in distress to explore their feelings, talk about their problems and challenges and help support with making a positive change in their lives.

Our Director of Housing Peter Gill said: “We are so pleased that we are now able to offer this new service to our customers. It fills a real gap in the service which we were unable to offer before.

“Investing in services to improve our customers’ wellbeing through the tough times has never been more important to us and we are delighted that we will be able to offer the extra support of Structure Telephone Counselling.

“One of the pledges in our business strategy is “we are looking out for our citizens”, we want our services to reflect that we are on our customers’ side, to make their lives easier and to support them when they need it.

“We are pleased to have provided this service over the past two years and I’m really looking forward to seeing the take up of the Structure Telephone Counselling.”

This year we will also be improving our customer feedback on the service by asking those who have used the Tenant Support and Wellbeing service to complete a confidential survey on our customer portal My Account.

We also plan to improve marketing of the service by providing monthly bulletins for customers about our Tenant Support and Wellbeing service. These will also raise awareness of certain topics such as anti-social behaviour and debt advice and will be uploaded to My Account for customers to access. We have bulletins planned for the next 12 months.

In the last year 291 new cases used our Tennant Support and Wellbeing Service, which generated 442 contacts.  Anonymous usage data tells us that relationship breakdown and addiction are two considerable concerns that people are reaching out for help with.

Customers can access our Tennant Support and Wellbeing Service on our website here.

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