Shelter is a basic human requirement, yet housing in the UK has increasingly been perceived as an asset rather than the secure base everyone requires for their basic physical and mental health needs and well-being.

This book examines how all types of housing have become precarious for many service users with whom social workers will engage and makes some suggestions regarding action and best practice. Showing how people become homelessness and the difficulties finding a way out of this, the housing options for specific populations including care leavers, those with disabilities, families and older people will be examined. All this will be framed in the context of social work practice, building practitioner knowledge and confidence around an area that affects everyone but the significance of which is sometimes underexamined in holistic assessments. Packed with reflective examples and case studies, each chapter also includes a ‘tuning in’ exercise to help prepare the reader for what the chapter will tackle, with concluding thoughts on these exercises at chapter end.

This book is suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate social work students as they begin to think of more specialised areas of work in their second or subsequent years, as well as social work practitioners, who will be increasingly aware of the pressures of housing costs on those with whom they work.