Product update: action plans in seconds
See the latest enhancement that allows you to take away an action plan.
Support starts with
asking.
Ask:Enact bridges knowledge gaps, giving professionals the confidence to ask questions and respond with clear, consistent advice—helping to prevent homelessness.
What is Ask:Enact?
Ask:Enact helps professionals identify housing risks early and act before problems lead to homelessness. By bridging knowledge gaps, it provides clear advice, flags urgent risks, and creates a pathway to support.
The tool was developed in response to Scotland’s new Ask and Act duties, which requires professionals to check if someone is homeless or at risk—and to take appropriate action. We know these conversations can be difficult. Ask:Enact removes uncertainty by giving staff reliable information and practical steps they can trust.
See the Impact
Ask:Enact isn’t limited to homelessness prevention. Its conversational approach can be applied wherever professionals need support to ask sensitive questions and respond with clarity — from housing and health, to finance, employability, and safeguarding.
- Bridge knowledge gaps - Consistent, accurate guidance across services.
- Empower professionals - Confidence to ask and act, without extra training.
- Trauma informed - Enables one conversation to offer more impact for the person in need
- Support communities - Reduce stigma and make conversations more approachable and meaningful.
- Improve services - Insights from real conversations highlight local needs and trends.
- Inform policy - Data from lived experience shows where resources are most effective.
- Cost saving - Reduce ongoing training and empower professionals to offer more.
The story behind ASK:ENACT
Ask:Enact was founded by Christopher Parker, who has spent over twenty years working across housing, justice, and public protection. His career began in supported housing for young people in North Yorkshire and later took him to Aberdeen, where he led service redesigns and a statutory partnership.
Along the way, Christopher saw a recurring challenge: professionals bring expertise in their own fields, but the people they support often face overlapping problems—housing, health, finances, safety—that no single professional can fully navigate. Opportunities to act early were being missed.
Determined to change this, he began building an application, exploring whether technology could help bridge those knowledge gaps and engage with people in a conversational and inquisitive manner. The idea was simple: give professionals confidence that when they ask a question, they’ll receive clear, practical guidance and knowledge to guide people towards the right support and help them access the services that meet their needs.
That idea quickly grew. Christopher was invited to join the Aberdeen Task and Activation Partnership to develop a successful bid to the Scottish Government Upstream Prevention Fund. With backing from government and third-sector partners, ASK:ENACT has evolved from a personal experiment into a collaborative system designed to identify risks early, prevent crisis, and capture lived experience to shape better policy and services.
From the Blog
Ask and Act Duties: What Scotland’s New Housing Bill Means for Services
Understand the new prevention duties and what councils, health boards, landlords, and partners need to do next.