Hello, my name is Abraham Bickersteth and I am a Senior Housing Needs Officer at Barnet Homes. I started at Barnet Homes as a Graduate Trainee within the Housing Options Service in September 2018. After one year I became a Housing Needs Officer and recently became a Senior Housing Needs Officer within the service. I want to give you a flavour of what my job looks like.

My role primarily involves the following:

  • Assessing a customers housing needs and eligibility
  • Preventing homelessness and providing high quality housing advice
  • Assessing what priority band people fall into under Barnet’s Housing Allocations Scheme

I manage a caseload of approximately 40 households. A typical day involves me speaking with my customers to enable me to best support them, requesting documentation to enable me to complete their banding assessment and completing tailored personal housing plans to ensure the customers.

I work with are provided with high quality advice to best support them in securing appropriate accommodation.

I also participate in a duty rota system. This means once a week I interview people approaching Barnet Homes requiring housing assistance. People approach us from a broad range of scenarios, for example: their landlord may have served them an eviction notice, or they are at risk of domestic abuse in their home, or they are in medically unsuitable accommodation.

It can often be very challenging and moving hearing the hardships people experience. I am passionate about preventing homelessness and look to always approach people’s situations with empathy and take a person-centred approach. I also enjoy the problem-solving aspect of my work and find it very rewarding working with people to help resolve their housing situation. I cannot always meet people’s ideal preferences but always aim to be accountable and make as positive a difference as possible.

I am lucky to work within a helpful and supportive team which is massively helpful.

Abraham’s manager, Isabel Williams, Housing Needs Manager, “Since early 2021 Abraham has been selected to mentor our annual cohorts of six or seven Housing Needs Trainees and has done an amazing job helping to develop BH’s Housing Needs Officers of the future. He has just the right mix of empathy and skill to both support and challenge in equal measure. He regularly receives excellent complimentary feedback from his colleagues as he is generous with his knowledge, attention and delivery of learning. A shining, conscientious exemplar.”