Professional standards resources
Welcome to our professional standards resources hub. Here, you’ll find a wide range of materials to help you understand, apply, and champion the CIH professional standards.
From expert insights to real-world examples, this page brings together everything you need — including blogs, articles, publications, webinar recordings, and case studies from across the sector — to support your professional development and organisational growth.
The professional standards in action: How organisations have embedded the framework
See how organisations across the sector are putting the CIH professional standards into practice. Our case studies highlight real-world examples of how teams have adopted the standards to strengthen their services and organisational values, develop their culture and people, and drive positive change promoting professionalism across teams
Use these stories as inspiration for your own journey towards embedding professional standards in your organisation.
Abri
Abri
Abri has recently developed a framework to provide their colleagues with career direction and a wide variety of development routes, all intended to create housing professionals of the future in every discipline.
With many new entrants to the sector joining us, they needed a way to help them become housing professionals first. This framework supports every colleague to develop expertise in their own areas whilst ensuring the context of our sector is front and foremost for us all.
settle
settle
The launch of the CIH professional standards came at a great time for settle. They recently introduced a new behavioural framework, 'the settle way', which helps identify their culture and working methods.
There is a clear alignment with the seven characteristics of the professional standards and 'the settle way' behaviours. Their plans for 2021 include weaving both 'the settle way' and its alignment to our professional standards into everything they do, creating a complete end-to-end cultural experience for all settle colleagues.
Succour Haven CIC
Succour Haven CIC
Succour Haven CIC serve the community through a combination of housing and person centred based empowerment and support, including the accessibility of local community support and wellbeing themed provision and public services.
They have adopted the professional standards by embedding them into the proactive delivery of their 'five steps of supported living' engagement and strategy themes with their tenants, along with the professional relationships with the clientele and partner agencies, including their operational and strategic planning activities and a reflection of the core values and beliefs.
Paul Powell | Director of Succour Haven CIC - "Our adopted Professional Standards are embedded in the proactive delivery of our ‘five Steps of Supported Living’ engagement and strategy themes with our tenants, alongside the professional relationships with our clienteles and our partner agencies, including our operational and strategic planning activities, and a reflection of our core values and beliefs."
Elim Housing Association
Elim Housing Association
"It struck me that there was a coherence between the CIH professional standards and Elim Housing’s ‘CARES’ Values. I decided to map the standards against our values.
It helped to demonstrate the importance of CIH qualifications to the organisation and to sense check Elim’s values against the wider standard. We are certainly planning for more of our colleagues to access CIH qualifications as a result of this synergy."
Paul Smith | Chief executive of Elim Housing Association
Exploring the professional standards
The CIH professional standards set the benchmark for exemplary behaviour of housing professionals and for organisations in the sector; by applying these recognised and valued characteristics in your daily role, you, your organisation, and the whole profession gains a higher degree of trust and credibility, driving positive outcomes for you as a professional, for organisations and communities.
With these blogs, you can explore the meaning of each of the characteristics in depth, immersing yourself in self-reflection that will lead you to decode your own values in a values-based profession. You will assess the real impact that your conduct and professional behaviour has on your role and your team's role, your organisation, the wider sector, and customers with practical tips and takeaway questions to consider.
Top tips to improve your professional standards self-assessment scores
Now you've taken time to reflect honestly on your professional journey and think about your development needs, you can look to improve your self-assessment scores to help fill any behaviour and skills gaps to continue growing in your CPD journey.
With these detailed steps and advice that combine self-reflection, practical actions and continuous learning, discover how to develop, enhance and champion your responses.
