Counselling Placed Inside Employment and Skills Support

At a glance 

• Ongo Homes launched OngoTalk in 2023, with eight counsellors registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, after NHS waits of up to two years in some areas left tenants without timely support. 

• A survey of around 12,000 tenants drew over 1,500 responses, and 52 per cent said mental health and wellbeing support was important to them. 

• Among people not working when they started NHS Talking Therapies, employment advisor support alongside therapy was associated with monthly earnings £105 higher after three years. 

 Ongo Homes, a housing association with just over 12,000 homes across Greater Lincolnshire and into Yorkshire, launched OngoTalk in 2023. The service is an in-house counselling team for tenants, and it began with a pattern in Ongo's employment and skills work. After lockdown, a growing share of the people using those services were held back by mental health problems, alongside the financial worries, relationship breakdown and housing issues the teams already supported. 

NHS waiting lists of up to two years in some cases meant a referral elsewhere did not resolve the barrier in a useful time. Ongo built its own team of eight counsellors, all registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, inside its skills and personal development team. The service is free to Ongo tenants. 

How the service is set up 

Counsellors are trained across a range of approaches rather than cognitive behavioural therapy alone. First appointments typically take a few weeks to arrange, not months. Crisis and trauma response is not offered, and the NHS remains the route for anyone in crisis. 

Demand exceeds capacity. Overspill goes to trusted associate counsellors, and placements are offered to counselling students from a local university. Students are interviewed before starting, hold student membership of the professional body and are supervised throughout. Supervision at that standard needs a certain scale to sustain. 

The employment and skills team, recruitment agency and counselling team share an open reception area at the Scunthorpe head office, deliberately without a formal desk, so that the first point of contact does not act as a barrier. Around 1,000 people a year use employment and skills support, and between a quarter and a third of them also use counselling. Housing management teams also refer tenants where issues such as hoarding affect their ability to work with them. 

In 2024 to 2025, 354 people used OngoTalk across about 12,000 tenancies. 

What the evidence shows 

Ongo measures impact for individuals rather than across the tenant base. Most people supported into employment are tracked for six months, and around two thirds of those on the employment and skills route reach a positive outcome. The organisation has not attempted to measure the effect of counselling on arrears or maintenance across its whole stock. 

Area-based evidence is stronger. On one estate in Barton upon Humber, a community programme that included a community centre, youth activities, links to health services and access to mental health support was followed by lower turnover and fewer empty homes. Antisocial behaviour halved and rent arrears reduced significantly. Those results reflect the whole programme, not counselling alone, and they were visible because the estate could be measured as a defined area. 

National evidence points the same way. The Office for National Statistics has reported that, among people not working when they started NHS Talking Therapies, employment advisor support alongside therapy was associated with monthly earnings £105 higher after three years. The English Housing Survey shows households reporting a mental health issue rising from 17 per cent in 2013 to 2014 to 38 per cent in 2023 to 2024. In a small Altair survey, 82 per cent of respondents linked rent arrears and financial difficulty to tenant mental health. 

The Keep Britain Working review, published in 2025, estimates that economic inactivity caused by ill health costs the UK £212 billion a year. 

Funding and governance 

OngoTalk is funded through Ongo Communities, a charity established in 2013. Ongo Homes seeds the charity each year with just over £1 million, rising with CPI and paid from surplus. The charity separately bids for grants and contracts from the Department for Work and Pensions, Jobcentre arrangements, local councils and other funders. In its best years that has added over £500,000. Last year it was under £400,000, with European Social Fund income no longer available. 

The Ongo Homes Board sets the broad priorities for the charity's work. Ring fencing the money keeps spend easy to track and keeps housing management and community work distinct. A survey of tenants, which drew over 1,500 responses from roughly 12,000 tenants, around 13 per cent, informs where that money goes. Of those who responded, 52 per cent said mental health and wellbeing support was important to them. 

What this means for housing providers 

From a Healthy Homes Hub perspective, the model connects resident mental health with the factors that determine whether support and tenancy sustainment work in practice, including income, employment and the ability to engage with the landlord. 

Ongo does not treat OngoTalk as a standalone service. It is one part of an employment and skills offer, and Ongo is open to offering it to small local employers and to discussing paid or shared arrangements with other social landlords. Clarity about purpose, outcomes and resourcing is the main condition for any landlord considering a similar service, and quality supervision cannot be reduced. 

The approach depends on scale, protected funding and a defined purpose.  

Practical steps for housing providers 

• Record where mental health barriers are stopping tenants from engaging with employment, skills or housing support, to establish whether a need exists before designing a response. 

• Ask tenants directly which community and wellbeing services matter to them, and use the responses to set spending priorities. 

• Compare local NHS mental health waiting times with how long tenants can realistically wait, to identify where a timely alternative would change outcomes. 

• Locate any counselling or wellbeing support alongside existing employment, skills and housing teams, with clear referral routes in both directions. 

• Define the boundaries of the service in advance, including that crisis and trauma response remains with statutory services, and make this clear to referrers. 

• Test whether qualification, supervision and management standards can be sustained at your scale before building a service, and consider buying in or learning from an established provider where they cannot. 

• Agree the outcomes, the measures and a protected funding route before launch, and where possible measure results within a defined area to see the effect on housing management outcomes. 

• ONS analysis of employment advisors in NHS Talking Therapies: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/mentalhealth/bulletins/theimpactofemploymentadvisorsinnhstalkingtherapiesonemployeeearningsandemploymentstatusengland/april2014tomarch2025 

• Keep Britain Working review, final report: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keep-britain-working-review-final-report 

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