Learning, Policy and Professional Practice

walkway made of wooden slats with a young plant with green leaves growing through the planks

We help housing, health, social care, and third sector organisations turn good practice principles into evidence-based policy and guidelines that support proportionate and ethical hoarding interventions - underpinned by a structured learning pathway.

The Gap We Work In

You've may have already tried one-off training courses.

Most organisations we work with have. Team members came away more aware of hoarding behaviours. Then the same problems kept coming back.

Awareness changes how practitioners feel, but usually doesn't change what happens next.

Sustainable change depends on behaviour - the practitioner's as much as the person they're supporting - and behaviour doesn't shift because someone undertook a few hours training. It shifts when people have the capability, the motivation and the opportunity to work differently.

If this sounds familiar

  • The same situations keep returning, and each response starts from scratch.

  • Different teams use different definitions of what counts as risk.

  • Team members aren't sure what to record, or when to escalate.

  • A clearance resolved the risk, and less than twelve months later it was back.

  • Your policy is generic, out of date, or doesn't exist.

  • Risk management and the person's rights keep pulling in opposite directions.

  • Households fall between housing, social work and health, led by no-one.

Hoarding sits where risk, rights, autonomy, safeguarding and tenancy sustainment all meet. That is why it defeats generic policy and one-off training.

What We Do

We work with organisations that need a response consistent enough to be fair, proportionate enough to be ethical, and documented enough to be defensible.

Scientific evidence, innovation and creativity shape the way we work.

Image copyright - hoarding academy: Transdisciplinary Dialogue World Cafe Event, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, 2024


“I have been impressed with Linda’s knowledge on the topic of hoarding, and her generosity and skill in translating and communicating academic knowledge and complex ideas into something that is pragmatic and relatable to practitioners.”

~ Kerry Musselbrook, Iriss