Having been an annual fixture of the Scottish conference calendar for over twenty-five years, the SHASC is unique in at least two respects.

It is the only national event that as its core purpose brings together service users, providers and policy makers to discuss national strategic and practice issues. It is also a not-for-profit event that is organised by a consortium of organisations with an interest in housing and support.

In the past the event has included Age Scotland, CIH Scotland, Homeless Action Scotland, Housing Support Enabling Unit, Housing Options Scotland, St Joseph’s Services, SAY Women, Scottish Women’s Aid, Scotland’s Housing Network, SFHA and SHARE.

For many years, SHASC has been financially supported by the Scottish Government in order to facilitate the engagement of service users in the conference planning process and their attendance at the national conference itself. However, in 2017, Scottish Government withheld their financial support of SHASC.

This is causing the planning group, made up of members of staff of the organisations listed above, to think long and hard about the future of the event.

The housing and support world is a very different place in 2017 than it was more than twenty-five years when the first SHASC was organised. One major change has been the degree and nature of involvement of users in housing and support service planning and management. In the early ‘90’s, genuinely user-led services were more of a novelty than they are now, when service users should be at the heart of service planning and management and that place supported by regulation. It made the working group members wonder, ‘Is there even a need for SHASC in 2017, or has the world moved on?’

As it mulls the future of SHASC, the organisers really need to know the views of housing and support providers and of course, service users. Does SHASC still serve a useful purpose, and if so, what is that purpose? If SHASC does still have a purpose, is an annual one-day conference the best way of meeting the needs of the sector?

Over the next few months, SHASC working group members will be going out and about to existing meetings of housing support users to ask these questions.

And it would also like everybody with an interest in housing and support, providers, users, policy-makers etc., to complete a very short online survey about the future of SHASC, by clicking the link here. It only takes a few minutes to complete at most.

Respondents will be emailed to let them know the decision of the planning group following this period of consultation.