Home > About SACHA > Our Profile

About SACHA

1. Our Profile

St Andrews Community Housing Association, also known as SACHA, is a ‘not for profit’ organisation whose aim is to provide affordable and sustainable housing solutions for young people, single adults and families. In addition to providing housing related services, specialist support teams are available to deal with areas such as budget management and the development of life skills, with a view to helping people make informed decisions and sustain their accommodation needs.

The governing body and key management staff of SACHA have long term and high level experience in both the public and private sectors. Strong links have been established and continue to be developed with the majority of the key and preferred specialist housing, general accommodation, support and care providers in the areas where our services are provided.

We believe that a viable, effective and successful service provision must not only be aware of other professional networks, it must also forge good working relationships with them and identify the people, teams and provisions that are most relevant to the people for whom we provide services.

From the referral stage, we try and identify all persons, teams and agencies involved with the service user and make contact to introduce ourselves at the commencement of the service provision. In this way, all key parties are aware of each other and relevant information can be verified and shared to ensure it is accurate and that planned outcomes are viable etc. To sustain the relevance and success of the service provided, it is important that good communication is maintained with both with the service user and “partners” throughout the service provision.

Generally, the needs of all service users are assessed, identified, discussed, agreed and dealt with in conjunction with the person, placing team, local authority and relevant partners, organisations and stakeholders. Any incidents and changes in circumstances are fully investigated and a report generated that will detail the incident, those involved, action taken, further action proposed and state with whom discussed and agreed. All important information and communication is recorded and reported and the methods adopted are dependent on the complexity, urgency and nature of the provision and need.

We aim to ensure that we regularly communicate with all relevant parties, in order to minimise risk, maximise support and be fully aware of the sensitivity and changing nature of the service user’s situation, to avoid the unnecessary duplication of time consuming tasks and prevent the service user(s) being overwhelmed. A successful joint working process should result in a group action plan being put together that will identify and agree on what needs to be done in the short, medium and long term and who will do it.

Because of our long standing relationship with numerous local authority teams, particularly within the London Borough of Enfield and our multidisciplinary accreditation achievements, we are a well known provider to many of the organisations that work with the Council and have worked with several of them over a number of years. As such, we have established successful joint working protocols and these relationships are further strengthened via regular meetings, committees, joint training initiatives and attending specific forums and panels, of which we are very actively involved.