I am providing a narrative and summarising a brief history of New Roots.
The purpose of this piece is to give wider readers a flavour of the journey that New Roots has been on to arrive at our current situation.
Origins
In 1971 a Senior Probation Officer was invited by the Home Office (after being one of the first parole officers in the country) to establish an alternative to imprisonment for twelve adult male recidivist offenders in Birmingham by creating a Probation Hostel; this was only one of less than a handful in the country.
This entailed prisoners being released on licence on a two-year residency order, including men on life licences e.g. those serving life sentences for murder and/or S1 offences.
The Probation Officer, his wife, mother, teenage daughter and residential staff lived on site with other staff providing daily services; the hostel established communal values such as eating together, regular get up times, helping with the cooking, washing up and keeping communal areas clean.
Employment was available to some through the building up of relationships with employers, but there was a need to devise programmes of meaningful activities for others. This entailed thinking that went well outside of the box e.g. can collections at the motor show (at the then NEC)- the proceeds funding trips abroad and regular sailing trips around the Western Isles of Scotland.
These holistic actions provided by all concerned with integrity offered opportunity, hope and dignity to those that who would otherwise be languishing in gaol.
New Roots History
Due to his experience it was evident that there was a lack of accommodation for those leaving prison and given his gregarious nature he had made many contacts. It was evident to him that there were many large properties (including hotels) that were under occupied and underused in Birmingham. These two situations spawned the concept of New Roots on his impending retirement from the probation service.
Initially with 1 unit of 12 beds, New Roots was established, providing 24 hour management and general care, support and supervision for residents.
The concept quickly gained popularity with homeless and roofless people, police, probation and property owners and New Roots experienced rapid growth over the next few years. New Roots was meeting the incessant, and sometimes overwhelming, demand for non-priority homeless people to get a safe roof over their head.
This initially was an enterprise but in 1996 New Roots secured Charitable Status in order to maintain its viability given the changes to Housing Benefit Regulations (reg13) and secure its supported accommodation exempt status through its already established model of providing general care, support and supervision and its status as an “exempt accommodation provider”. A position that was confirmed after review in 2009.
The concept of offering opportunity, hope, and dignity with integrity to residents was, and remains, one of the cornerstones of New Roots. Another cornerstone was and still is the commitment to offer employment to our residents.
The radical nature of the work and “out of the box” thinking did lead to some interesting and occasionally turbulent times with authority over the years.
In 2005 the founder retired from New Roots.
At this point there were some 300 beds with around 25% being directly managed and the remainder being managed on an Arm’s Length basis, with a directly employed staff group of seven administrative staff and around a dozen day and night staff.
The next few years proved to be financially turbulent with erratic rates of Housing Benefit being paid, the introduction of HMO licences and our compliance, and the erroneous implementation of Local Housing Allowance.
Despite the financial juggling act there was a management emphasis on improving the quality of our internal systems including policies, procedures and finance, whist attempting to maintain a quality, holistic provision to our residents.
In 2012 we began the process of applying to become a Registered Social Landlord. This was to take two years due to the Regulator reviewing and strengthening their approval procedures. New Roots was one of only 3 to be approved that year.
Post 2014
General
The past five years have gone by very quickly!
New Roots has embraced and applied its newly hard worked for status and responsibilities to the best of its abilities and within available means, not only to its residents but to Housing Regulatory Standards, Companies House, The Charity Commission, The Regulatory Fire Reform Act 2005, Decent Homes Standards, Fitness for Human Habitation Act 2018 and the Housing Health and Safety Rating System.
The securing of RSL status has seen a significant growth in the Agency and the stability in regular income has enabled us to become more financially robust and to develop.
The following words can only give a flavour of the journey we are on: -
Internal
· Staffing
The directly employed staff group has grown to over 50 with higher level skills being brought into the agency- these have had a specific focus on Health and Safety (Building Inspections, Fire Risk Assessment, Legionella Risk Assessment) and Finance.
Other existing roles have been developed including Compliance Manager and Business Manager.
New Roots does employ the services of consultants on an ad hoc basis on HR and developing our Social Return on Investment (Value for Money).
· Training
Existing staff are encouraged to undertake accredited training and/or opportunities to enhance their Continuing Personal Development.
· In house Training
Over the course of the past few months the majority of staff have attended Safeguarding and Fire Awareness training.
· Systems Development
Systems are reviewed on a regular basis.
The ones to bring to your attention are the -
- Process for accepting potential Arm’s Length Providers application for inclusion into New Roots portfolio.
This is a stringent process, that requires a short Business Plan, Building Inspections (including a full set of certificates and reports) and the agreement to a detailed Management Agreement.
- Special Measures and Decommissioning
Should an Arms Length provider be adjudged to be falling below acceptable standards on a range of set criteria New Roots has developed a framework within which to work with the provider to bring their service up to acceptable standards.
Should there continue to be non-compliance New Roots decommissions the property (ies).
· Governance
Central government deliberations and consultations over the past three years as to the future funding for Supported Accommodation did leave Trustees and managers in a quandary as to the nature of Trustees to appoint (plan for growth or downsizing) and then suitably deal with people’s reluctance to accept a Trustee position and the personal liability this entails.
Expert advisors are invited to attend Board Meetings.
Their decision to leave the funding structure as it is for the foreseeable future has now enabled a refocussing.
This in the past couple of months has led to the appointment of three new trustees. This will enable us to establish a risk audit as well as finance and audit committee
All trustees are regularly updated between meetings with relevant key information.
· Residents Forum
In development for 18 months, this has been funded and constituted to offer a voice and activities to forum members and residents, with a view to having a resident’s representative on the Board.
External
New Roots engages externally on a range of platforms.
Briefly these are:
· Developing a relationship with Spitfire Services.
· Volunteering and communal activities.
· Lead on Cycle Birmingham and New Roots Cycling Club.
· Art Group.
· Allotment Project.
· Reduction of food waste through Fareshare, Tesco and The Junk Food Project.
· Engagement of local tradesmen and suppliers.
· A member of the Birmingham Adult Safeguarding Board.
· Engagement with the soon to be established BCC group in the voluntary development of standards for exempt accommodation providers.
- Janine Phillips, Managing Director
