Wellington Guelph Hoarding Response
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For Service Providers

This page is intended for service providers who have encountered a highly cluttered situations as a part of their work. This includes people from community services, health care and mental health, developmental services, enforcement agencies such as fire departments, property standards and by-law, police, and animal protective services and more.

Assessment Tools

There are many assessment and screening tools that may be relevant to hoarding situations. Many are available below, with a brief description of how they may be beneficial.

Community Assessments

HOMES© Multidisciplinary Hoarding Risk Assessment

  • Use for assessing home safety using a variety of different factors
  • Helps to identify what other services may need to become involved, depending on the risks identified
Download

Clutter Image Rating Scale

  • A quick reference to help identify the volume of possessions in a person’s home
  • Helpful for using shared language between colleagues/agencies
  • Does not identify safety risks
  • Situations might look quite different than the photos
Download
Clutter Image Rating Scale – Bathroom
Download

Home Environment Index

  • Assessment of home sanitation in cluttered environment
Download

Activities of Dailing Living – Hoarding

  • Client rates the level of difficulty they have doing everyday activities in their home
Download

ICD Clutter-Hoarding Scale (Quick Reference)

  • Provides brief parameters related to home safety and groups into five distinct categories
  • Outlines the personal protective equipment (PPE) a professional will need in order to work in homes with different levels of safety concerns
Download

Clinical Assessments

These documents should be used by mental health clinicians for the purposes of assessment. We do not recommend community services use these tools.

Hoarding Rating Scale

  • Can be given to a client to complete on their own, or given by interview by a clinician
  • Has questions about clutter, difficulty discarding, excessive acquisition, and the resulting distress and impairment caused by hoarding
Download

Saving Inventory-Revised

  • A self-report tool to determine the severity of hoarding symptoms: difficulty discarding, clutter, and excessive acquisition
Download

Family Impact Scale for Hoarding (FISH) – for assessing the impact on family members

  • Helps identify level of accommodation by family members to prevent distress or conflict with family member with hoarding
  • Identify extent to which relative’s hoarding problem has had an impact on a family member’s life
Download

Saving Cognitions Inventory

  • Self-report measure that evaluates beliefs about and emotional attachment to possessions related to emotional attachment, control, responsibility, and memory
Download

Tufts Animal Care and Condition (TACC)

  • For veterinarians, animal control officers, police, and cruelty investigators
  • Scales for assessing body condition, weather and environmental safety, and physical care in dogs
Download

Training & Education

Free Presentations for Local Agencies

The WGHR provides presentations on hoarding and harm reduction to local agencies at no cost. Please contact us if you would like to schedule a presentation at your agency. We also offer no-cost presentations several times per year that agency staff can sign up for.

Download

Annual Workshop

Each year we offer a workshop on specialized topics in hoarding for service providers. We have been fortunate to have leading experts on hoarding speak to our community, promoting evidence-based best practices.

Visit our Events page for a complete list of upcoming sessions and past OTN presentations.

Events

Hoarding Response E-learning

Vic, Michelle and Judy each face unique challenges as they manage their cluttered lives. These stories illustrate the person-centred strategies used by service providers as they support individuals who hoard. They also show why the Herculean efforts of supportive service providers matter – one person at a time.

Victor-Character

Vic's Story

Finding the Whole Person Within the Clutter
Michelle-Character

Michelle's Story

Encouraging Change Through Effective Communication
Judy-Character

Judy's Story

When Less Is More: The Power of Harm Reduction
PLAY NOW

OTN Clinical Presentations

Join us 3-4 times per year to hear Dr. Karen Rowa and other clinical specialists speak on various topics related to hoarding.

Service providers in the Guelph Wellington can contact the WGHR Coordinator to find sites who are open to guests using OTN equipment.

Visit our events page to see when our next OTN presentation is scheduled.

If you do not have access to OTN, you can watch the presentation on your computer. Computers must have Microsoft Silverlight installed in order to view the presentation via (either live or recorded).

Other Training and Education Opportunities

Through our work with the Ontario Provincial Hoarding Network, other municipalities and regions send us training and education opportunities for service providers. We will share these links and opportunities below, as well as any additional opportunities we are aware of.

Hoarding Training Institute

They offer a three-day training for service providers who are working with hoarding: 

www.metrohousingboston.org

Local Agencies

Hoarding situations can be very complex. Often people need support from more than one service. Below is a list of local agencies who may work with people with hoarding behaviours in various capacities. Please note that none of these agencies specialize in hoarding.

Many of these agencies have representation on our Hoarding Multidisciplinary Team. If you would like more information about the Hoarding Multidisciplinary Team, please contact the WGHR Coordinator.

Please explore these websites, or call the agency for more information. If you aren’t sure where to start, please call the Wellington Guelph Hoarding Response Coordinator to help determine how an agency could get involved.

Please note: we do not recommend or endorse any service. This list is meant to provide a starting point from which to explore options.

Average number of agencies involved in a given case

2.3

with a maximum number of 8 agencies involved.1

1‘Snapshot’ of Hoarding in Wellington Guelph Initiative by the Wellington Guelph Hoarding Network (WGHN)

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