Thursday 26 March 2009

Well I'm back and am venting!!!!!!!!!!

It seems to me that the push for offering "Options" to clients who are threatened with homeless or are actually homeless means that they are basically being mislead, misinformed or even in some cases actually lied to! I'm sorry I recognise that offering "Options" can be a good thing, but not if local authorities are lying to people. Only recently in my work place I was passed a case from our prevention and option team they had been dealing with the case for a number of months but had only now passed it for a Part VII assessment because the applicant had had contacted a solicitor who had written in asking why no decision had been made, the Options staffed wrote back and lied stating that a Part VII application had been taken 3 months ago, but a decision would be made in the next 7 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would say to anyone who represents clients in respect of homelessness applications to ask for a copy of the clients file and check when the client approached the Authority and when the Authority officially took a homelessness application. Willing to bet you'll find many cases where the duty to investigate under Part VII was triggered but was ignored!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi smoking, good to see you back, not enough of us posting these days!

Sadly nothing you say suprises me put it needs posting so more and more people outside of the housing world may come to learn the truth of what often happens in LA's!

Anonymous said...

Welcome back smoking gun.

Please keep venting. It helps to keep me sane to hear of the abuse of public office which you and others highlight. It reassures me to know that I am not seeing conspiracies and deceptions where none exist.

Ben S said...

Let it all out, and then deeeep breath!

Anonymous said...

Welcome back. Good to see you are still capable of anger ;-)

Anonymous said...

Nice to see that your back ! as I am in exactly the same situation as you refer to so its nice to see the other side of the fence !!

Still waiting for the decision letter, still paying 50 per night in a b&b and our case worker is still "too busy' to look at our case !

Please keep on venting !!