The future of SHASC
Survey on Scottish Housing and Support Conference now open.
The Scottish Housing and Support Conference has been an annual fixture of the Scottish conference calendar for over 25 years. 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.
- SHASC is a not-for-profit event that is organised by a consortium of organisations with an interest in housing and support, and 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 its financial support of SHASC.
This is causing the Planning Group, made up of members of staff of the organisations listed above, to think about the future of the event.
Over the next few months, SHASC Working Group members will be attending existing meetings of housing support users to ask if SHASC still has a purpose in supporting the sector and if so, how best can it fulfil that purpose?
SHASC would also like to invite those an interest in housing and support, providers, users, policy-makers, etc. to complete a very short online survey about the future of SHASC. It only takes a few minutes to complete at most. Your response could just make the difference to SHASC’s future.
Those who complete the survey and provide their contact details will be contacted regarding the Planning Group’s decision following this period of consultation.