‘Floating support’ is the term used to describe support services which are not provided as part of a package with specific housing, but can work with individuals wherever they live. Support workers will usually visit the service user in their own home to deliver support to ensure that the individual does not lose their tenancy, and can remain living successfully in the community.
Many Supporting People are trying to rebalance the mix of services they fund away from accommodation based support towards more floating support type services. There are a number of reasons for this. Floating support services are much more flexible than accommodation based support services, do not require the service user to move when their needs change, and can be provided to people irrespective of where they live.
Floating support services funded by Supporting People are often focused primarily on tenancy sustainment and generic teams may work across a whole variety of different clients living in different tenures, including owner occupiers (see service example two in service models section ADD LINK ADD LINK ADD LINK). However there are also examples of floating support services specifically for drug users and/or offenders that have a much stronger focus on tackling offending behaviour and continued engagement with treatment services (see service example one in the service models section.
Support is typically provided for at least three months and for a maximum of two years. Floating support is thought to be particularly valuable when a service user first moves into independent housing – for instance to help them settle in, get furniture and utilities arranged, and link into local services. The need for floating support may arise at any point however, for instance if the service user relapses and neglects their rent or lets friends use their home for drug use/dealing. Although support is typically delivered via visits to the service users home, this does not necessarily have to be the case. Some floating support services offer a range of pre-planned and ‘drop-in’ support so that service users can easily reconnect to the service if necessary (see service example two in the service models section).
Some potential disadvantages of floating support include:
Floating support services can avoid many of the planning and development problems associated with accommodation based services (see the Funding and development section of this toolkit).