Social-housing landlords training staff to spot tenants at risk of suicide

Maintenance workers, call-centre staff and housing officers are being sent on courses after growing problems among victims of austerity reforms.
 

Call-centre staff, housing officers and even maintenance workers are sent on courses that cost up to £300 per person, teaching participants how to judge whether someone is suicidal or suffering from mental-health problems. 

One member of staff working for Helena Homes reported entering the home of an older tenant living in sheltered housing to discover he had hanged himself on the back of the bathroom door.

“We do have some of the very most deprived people in the whole country. These people have more or less just given up. Some of them are just starving to death. It’s very distressing when someone stops paying their rent, and you go and find them in these circumstances. It’s going to back to something like Victorian times.”

The development comes amid evidence of growing desperation in Britain’s poorest regions as austerity bites. Last week Stephanie Bottrill, 53, took her own life, leaving a note for her children blaming her misery over the “bedroom tax”

But Ms Clark says the problem of mental illness in social-housing communities – and among staff dealing with distressed tenants – will only get worse as benefit cuts bite.