Compass Support, funded through Birmingham City Council Prevention and Communities Funding, have responded to the important issue of self-neglect and hoarding in the Reddicap and Castle Vale wards of Birmingham, with a specific project that focuses on supporting both organisations and individuals through a multi-agency, person-centred approach.
What is hoarding?
‘Hoarding can be described as ‘the collecting of, and inability to, discard of large quantities of goods, objects or information’.
Hoarding is a mental health condition. It was recognised in 2013 as ‘Hoarding Disorder’ in the DSM-V (the fifth edition of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Then the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2018 also recognised hoarding as a medical condition.
Due to the secretive nature of hoarding, it is difficult to know precisely how many people are affected. A conservative estimate is that between 2% and 5% of the population, which equates to at least 1.2 million households across the UK and 22,000 people in Birmingham are affected by hoarding behaviour.