Mutual exchange and reasonable adjustments

Theinternet

HI,

I have a recent diagnosis of autism and prior to this I was a psychiatric outpatient for many years. 

I also have recently done a mutual exchange and frankly I found the process pretty nasty. Unfortunately the person I dealt with lied to me about a number of things and generally pushed me around the point where it had quite a negative impact upon my health. 

In hindsight I should probably have tried to get someone from the community mental health team to to deal with the mutual exchange, however, it did get me thinking as to how inapprociate it is for people like myself to be forced to do a mutual exchange just to be able to move house within the social housing sector. 

At the very least shouldn't councils be required to make reasonable adjustments to people like myself to prevent experiences like I had occuring.

Whilst it's very important that people like myself live in social housing, I can't help but feel in this case it can be a bit of a poisoned challiice. You would be a fool to give it up given how insecure and hostile the private rented sector is toward disabled people, or even people with pets or children. But depending on your employment situation, it's far far easier to move into private rented accommodation and almost impossible to move in the social rented sector without using mutual exchange. This is wrong and in my opinion needs to change.

wheeliegran

That must have been so awful for you.
The housing should have an officer to help and accompany people with any kind of disability when they want to do an exchange. It would make things so much easier

Adrian_Scope

Sorry to read how difficult your experience was @Theinternet. How are you finding your new place?