Granton Information Centre received the prestigious Scottish National Standards certificate for the quality of their information and advice provision at a reception at the City Chambers on Thursday (17 March). GIC is the first Edinburgh organisation – and one of only a few advice agencies in Scotland – to achieve the award at this level, and their certificate was presented by Sheriff Principal Edward T Bowen QC.
The certificate presentation was the centrepiece of an event organised to celebrate the success of EHAP (Edinburgh Housing Advice Partnership), a consortium set up to provide housing advice services across the city in a contract with the city council. The consortium partners – Granton Information Centre, Community Health and Information (CHAI), Move On and FourSquare – offer a comprehensive range of housing advice services to the people of Edinburgh. EHAP provides a prison outreach project, a schools peer education service for S4 and S5 school leavers, housing advice in local neighbourhood settings and also provides representation at court – both for pre-prepared cases and also through an ‘emergency first aid’ service for people who turn up at court without representation. Midway through the three year agreement, the EHAP event offered an opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved so far and to look ahead to future challenges.
Welcoming delegates, Councillor Paul Edie (Chair of the Health, Social Care and Housing Committee) said: “Homelessness is something I’m very passionate about and I’m very proud of this council’s record. In Scotland, we have an obligation to eradicating unintentional homelessness by 2012 – not something that applies south of the border – and I think that’s a sign of what a progressive country Scotland is and how our social conscience reflects on public policy.”
He went on: “This council has a very radical strategy to tackle homelessness, developed in partnership with our colleagues in the voluntary sector and rolled out over the last couple of years. Critical to that strategy has been the provision of good quality ‘right first time’ housing advice to our service users. I’m really proud that last year homelessness dropped by 13% in Edinburgh, and EHAP are very important players in that strategy. No less than 99% of people who have used EHAP have not subsequently gone on to present themselves as homeless – that’s a jaw-dropping statistic; in any walk of life if you get that level of satisfaction rating you’d be entirely happy. I’d like to thank our EHAP partners for the great work they are doing to stop people losing their homes – a terrible thing to happen to anyone – and I wish you every success in the year ahead.”
One of Sherriff Principal Bowen’s responsibilities is to ensure ‘the efficient dispersal of Sherriff Court business’ and he explained that, while criminal cases take up the bulk of time at the court, civil business – including housing cases dealing with evictions and repossessions – take up a considerable amount of court time. He said that many of these cases could and should be resolved before they ever reached court, but added that there was also a need for suitable advice provision when cases did come to court.
“A recent review found that there is a need for proper advice – there remains a significant unmet need – and the EHAP service is critical to providing assistance prior to cases coming before the court system; providing there is a proper input by way of advice at an early stage, housing disputes can be resolved. The court needs to have confidence that suitable advice is available, so the service that EHAP provides is critical to the function of Edinburgh Sherriff Court. That’s demonstrated by the figures EHAP has provided for 2010 -11. We are indebted to all those involved in providing the EHAP service, which is widely acknowledged to be highly effective, and it gives me great pleasure to recognise that expertise by the presentation of these certificates today.”
Frances Durie, vice-chairperson of Granton Information Centre, received the award on the project’s behalf. She said: “This is a really tremendous achievement and a great honour for Granton Information Centre. Our staff have worked very hard over a long period to achieve the levels of professionalism that they have, and it’s good that this effort has been rewarded. We’ve always known that people coming to Granton Information Centre will get the highest standard of independent advice available anywhere, but it’s nice to receive wider recognition for the quality of our advice work.”
Dave Pickering
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