duration

Location
Virtual

How to put vulnerability policies and resident insight into practice in everyday situations across housing management, customer services, repairs and complaints. Hear from the Housing Ombudsman, a C1 provider (Prima) and domestic abuse expert Kelly Henderson.  

  • Read more

    Vulnerability: how to Spot it. Record it. Act on it. 

    This practical half-day session explores how to recognise vulnerability, make service adjustments and act on customer insight information. It looks at the decisions staff face on a daily basis: when to adapt communication, offer additional support, reconsider an appointment or escalate a concern.  

    Focusing on two different examples – domestic abuse and hoarding, we’ll explore how teams can work with residents, coordinate their response and make sure important information leads to action. 

    Who you’ll hear from 

    • Zoe Miller, Compliance and Systemic Investigations Manager, Housing Ombudsman, will set the scene with learning from Relationship of Equals and subsequent casework, exploring what recognising, responding to and recording vulnerability should mean for everyday services
    • Kelly Henderson, Founder and Co-Managing Director, Addressing Domestic Abuse, will explore how all teams and contractors can better recognise coercion, control and hidden risk during contact with residents, responding safely and making sure concerns reach the right people
    • Jenny Devon, Sustainment and Cohesion Manager, and Katie Jones, Housing Manager, Prima Group, will share a practical hoarding case study, exploring how to build trust, balance support with risk and coordinate action across services. Prima received a C1 consumer grading in June 2026; the Regulator highlighted its use of tenant information to tailor services. 

    The morning will be chaired by Lewis Kinch, Head of Networks, HQN, bringing his extensive experience of resident engagement to highlight how teams can work more closely with residents and translate an understanding of their needs into practical action. 

    Key takeaways 

    • Spot vulnerability and any changes: Recognise that vulnerability can be temporary, hidden or triggered by events such as bereavement, abuse, debt, ill health, repairs failure or pressure at work, and use respectful questions rather than assumptions
    • Turn the Ombudsman’s three Rs into everyday practice: Apply recognise, respond and record consistently across services so that vulnerability is not left to one specialist team or missed during routine contact
    • Record only what helps colleagues act: Create concise, factual and accessible records that make adjustments, risks, actions and review points visible to the right people, reducing the need for residents to repeat their story. 

    Why attend? 

    Attending this event will give on-the-ground teams and operational managers a shared method for noticing changing circumstances, asking proportionate questions, adapting the service, escalating risk and making records that support the next action. Delegates will take back scenarios, prompts and assurance questions that can strengthen Ombudsman learning, complaint accessibility, safeguarding routes, repairs triage, Awaab’s Law readiness and evidence of staff competence. The event supports safer and more consistent practice without suggesting that attendance alone guarantees compliance or replaces specialist safeguarding advice. 

    Who should attend? 

    This event will be particularly useful for: 

    • Housing management, neighbourhood and ASB teams  
    • Customer service and contact centre teams  
    • Tenancy sustainment and safeguarding teams  
    • Complaints and customer resolution teams  
    • Repairs, maintenance and asset management teams  
    • Resident engagement and scrutiny teams  
    • Equality, diversity, inclusion and vulnerability leads  
    • Policy, assurance and service improvement teams  
    • Managers and senior leaders responsible for consumer regulation, service quality and resident safety. 
  • Our speakers

    Lewis Kinch, Head of Networks, HQN
    Lewis is a co-creation and engagement specialist driven by a belief that the people closest to challenges hold the answers to solving them. With 15 years experience across housing and community work, he champions power-sharing and genuine partnership between organisations and the communities they serve.
    Lewis has led the development of innovative frameworks and strategies that give residents meaningful influence in decision-making, always centring seldom-heard voices and challenging traditional top-down approaches.
    He combines systems thinking with participatory design methodologies to tackle complex challenges, committed to embedding person-centred cultures where residents, staff, and stakeholders work as equals.

    Dr Kelly Henderson, Founder and Co-Managing Director, Addressing Domestic Abuse
    Kelly is a housing and domestic abuse specialist with extensive experience across the housing sector, public policy and multiagency partnership work. She founded Addressing Domestic Abuse which specialises in training, policy development, research and evaluation in relation to domestic abuse, most of which focuses on the housing sector. She holds a Master’s in Housing Policy and a PhD from Durham University, where her research examined the pivotal role of housing within a coordinated community response to domestic abuse. Kelly has experience as a Researcher at Durham University and University of Leeds working on a range of domestic abuse research projects.

    A sector innovator, Kelly cofounded the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA), leading national accreditation work and supporting housing providers to strengthen their organisational responses to domestic abuse.

    Kelly has been widely recognised for her leadership, named 24 Housing’s ‘Housing Professional of the Year’ and one of the Top 20 Women Leaders in Housing (2020). She is coauthor of Housing and Domestic Abuse – Policy into Practice (Routledge).  Kelly is a board member at believe housing where she is Chair of Performance and Standards Committee.

    Zoe Miller, Compliance and Systemic Investigations Manager, The Housing Ombudsman Service
    As Compliance and Systemic Investigations Manager for the Housing Ombudsman, Zoe Miller leads a team carrying out systemic investigations into the wider and deeper issues driving complaints and ensuring compliance with membership requirements of the scheme and the Complaint Handling Code, providing recommendations to improve the social housing sector through the learning from complaints.

    She undertook the evaluation of the Ombudsman’s Damp and Mould Spotlight report, which resulted in the publication of the follow-up report in February 2023.

    Jenny Devon, Sustainment and Cohesion Manager, Prima Group
    Jenny has worked in Social Housing for over 16 years. She manages the Sustainment and Cohesion Team at Prima, developing services aimed at supporting Prima’s most vulnerable customers. The real development work in ‘Hoarding’ started in 2021, following an increase in Hoarding cases during lockdown. This included development of a Hoarding Peer Group for Wirral residents and setting up a Merseyside Hoarding and Housing Innovation group to support Housing Associations. The Innovation group has recently created a National Hoarding Charter to be launched at the end of 2026.

    Katie Jones, Housing Manager, Prima Group
    Katie has worked in social housing for over 28 years. She manages the Wirral Housing Team at Prima, delivering services aimed at supporting Prima’s customers across all tenancy and neighbourhood matters, as well as taking the lead on addressing anti-social behaviour. Katie’s team play a key role in supporting customers identified as needing additional help including around hoarding. She has played a key role during the development of the Hoarding Charter to ensuring the approach works operationally for customer facing colleagues.

  • Programme

    9:30am Welcome and introductions 

    Lewis Kinch, Head of Networks, HQN (Chair)

    9:40am A relationship of equals: what the Ombudsman expects on vulnerability 

    Zoe Miller, Compliance and Systemic Investigations Manager, The Housing Ombudsman Service
    • Learning from Relationship of Equals and what has changed since the report 
    • Case examples where vulnerability was missed, recorded but not acted on, or handled well 
    • Turning recognise, respond and record into consistent everyday practice.

    10:10am From policy to practice: getting vulnerability right 

    • Build a vulnerability policy that works across services, not just on paper 
    • Decide what to record, when to adapt services and when to escalate concerns 
    • Learn from challenges, difficult judgements and improvements made along the way.

    10:45am Break 

    11:00am Behind the front door: spotting coercion, control and hidden risk  

    Dr Kelly Henderson, Founder and Co-Managing Director, Addressing Domestic Abuse
    • How to spot signs of coercion and abuse that others might miss across organisations, including repairs teams and contractors
    • What to do next when something doesn’t feel right 
    • Good practice on flagging concerns, protecting residents, yourself and colleagues. 

    11:30am Hoarding: building trust and responding with care 

    Jenny Devon, Sustainment and Cohesion Manager and Katie Jones, Housing Manager, Prima Group
    • Recognising when hoarding creates risks to residents, homes and others 
    • Building trust and working with residents rather than relying on enforcement alone 
    • Coordinating services, managing complex cases and sharing what has worked in practice. 

    12:00pm Discussion, Q&A and wrap-up 

    12:30pm Close 

  • Cancellations and substitutions

    If you are unable to attend an event or public training course, please let us know in writing (email is fine) at least 48 hours before. Please email [email protected] Otherwise, a cancellation fee of £60 plus VAT will be chargeable. If you are using a package place to attend and do not inform us within the agreed time frame, then a place will be taken to cover your non-attendance. Cancellations must be made in writing, and will be acknowledged by HQN Limited.

  • Price and booking

    If you would like to send multiple members of your team to any of our events, please get in touch with [email protected] to find out about available deals for purchases of multiple places.

    Tickets

    Ticket Type Price Spaces
    Early bird Member ticket
    Available until 5:00pm on 18 October 2026    		 £160.00 N/A
    Early bird Non-member ticket
    Available until 5:00pm on 18 October 2026    		 £210.00 N/A
    Member ticket £200.00
    Non-member ticket £250.00

    Registration Information

    Booking Summary

    Please select at least one space to proceed with your booking.

    If you experience any issues when submitting your booking, please email [email protected] with the name and date of the session along with the delegate name(s), email address(es) and job title(s) and we'll process the booking for you.

Dates



18 November 2026
9:30am - 12:30pm
Book now

This event comes with a professional development certificate

Making a booking:

You don’t need to be logged in to make a booking.

Step 1: Select the number of delegates you would like to book on this session
Step 2: Complete the delegate details
Step 3: Check the details, tick the consent box, and press the book now button
Step 4: Member discounts will automatically be applied on the next page
Step 5: To use a coupon code please enter this at the top of the checkout page by clicking on the link
Step 6: Complete the booking details
Step 7: Confirm your booking
Step 8: You will receive a confirmation email with an order number, if you don’t receive this within 24 hours please get in touch with us – [email protected]