Gwent Hoarding Best Practice Guidance - Multidisciplinary Consultation

How can we create a more consistent, compassionate and evidence-informed response to hoarding across Gwent? Following the launch of the Gwent Regional Hoarding Task Force, which brought together around 100 professionals from across housing, health, social care, Environmental Health, Fire & Rescue, the third sector and specialist services, work has been underway to develop a set of Gwent Hoarding Best Practice Guidelines. Led by Holistic Hoarding CIC and the Gwent Regional Hoarding Task Force, the guidance is being developed from the evidence and priorities identified by professionals across the region, alongside lived experience, contemporary research, Welsh legislation and policy, and specialist practice. Challenge the Guidance This interactive consultation event is not about presenting a finished document or asking professionals to simply approve what has already been written. Instead, participants will be invited to scrutinise and vote on the key principles proposed for the guidance, consider how they would work across different professional and statutory settings, and tell us what may still be missing. Through live voting, discussion and our “Challenge the Guidance” multidisciplinary panel, we will explore areas of both consensus and disagreement. Your feedback will directly inform the next draft and form part of the formal consultation record. We will also be joined by our partners from the University of South Wales, who will present a potential stepped-care model for translating the principles within the guidance into a practical approach to implementation - helping us consider how different levels of need, complexity and risk could be matched with proportionate levels of support and intervention. The aim To move towards a shared Gwent approach in which people experiencing hoarding behaviours receive the right response, from the right services, at the right time - with an emphasis on early intervention, collaboration, proportionate responses, sustainable change, housing stability and reducing harm. The Gwent guidance will be implemented, evaluated and refined regionally, with the learning generated having the potential to contribute to the development of more consistent approaches across Wales and the wider UK. Whether you work in housing, health, social care, safeguarding, Environmental Health, Fire & Rescue, academia, the third sector, or have lived experience of hoarding, your perspective matters. Join us on 11 December to challenge the guidance, shape the next stage, and help us build a more consistent response to hoarding across Gwent.