Kerry Musselbrook

Often what you find is that people are ‘under the radar’ says Ronan and have been hoarding for a long time. He explains 'you're getting people who have potentially hoarded for 20, 30 years, and that are more likely to become known to older people's services through their health failing.' You also realise that they 'people have been hoarding for decades and people that have been hiding, hiding is maybe the wrong word, but have been managing it themselves without any (help), or not managing it themselves… ' 

Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) have just started a pilot in Fife – visiting and supporting a small number of people with hoarded homes to provide hands-on support in de-cluttering and making the home safer. It’s led by one of the Community Safety Advocates (CSA), Evelyn Taylor, who has scheduled visits with them every couple of weeks to build a relationship with people to make an impact on hoarding.
 

Data in the news and a trip down memory lane….

It’s January 2026, and I’m taking a bit of time for reflection at the start of the year to talk about ASP data and why the big statistics matter. This relates to the journey I and others have been involved in, in co-designing a National Minimum Dataset (NMDS) for ASP. I want to share reflections on why I think this data matters, why we built the NMDS, how it’s being used to support improvement and planning and can be used for optimal effect.

This is our first story of innovation addressing some of the challenges around supporting people who hoard. We hope that these inspire you, and that by going under the hood, you can see what key steps or ingredients are needed and what might translate for you!

We are especially interested in teams/services who have managed to address some of the key challenges we are aware of - whether these are small or large!

One current estimate is that 2-5% of the population has issues with clutter/hoarding, but this is hard to estimate as there is so much shame for someone admitting they have a clutter or hoarding issue that has reached problematic levels. Even at 5% this may be a modest estimate, translating into 125,000 people in Scotland with hoarding issues - and that doesn’t include others in the household affected or family and community members outside the home.

2025 has started at a fast pace with Hoarding Taskforce activities. Iriss Development Leads Kerry and Louise have been out and about facilitating stakeholder events with the taskforce local partners - Pan Lanarkshire, Glasgow City and Clackmannanshire and Stirling. Over 200 people participated across the three events, representing a fantastic cross-section of agencies, groups and organisations that provide care, support and public protection at local and national levels.

Last year we worked with Future Pathways, Voices for a Better Future and the Scottish Recovery Network to look at how we might co-design peer support for care survivors supported by Future Pathways.  If you aren't familiar with the term care survivors, it refers to people abused or neglected as children in the Scottish care system.

Peer support was something that care survivors had already identified that they wanted, to enhance what they were already receiving through individual support coordination, to help improve their own lives (and, of course, others).

Introduction

How can we mainstream the involvement of people with lived experience in social work and social care - to drive improvement, generate positive change, and do it all in a meaningful and effective way?