Ask:Enact gives professionals the confidence to ask the right questions and respond consistently, closing knowledge gaps before warning signs become crisis.
Ask:Enact gives professionals the confidence to ask the right questions and respond consistently, closing knowledge gaps before warning signs become crisis.
It supports professionals at the point of practice by:
Ask & Act duties are the initial focus, creating a foundation for wider prevention activity over time.
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.
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.
Early testing in Aberdeen is showing that professionals are willing to ask about housing insecurity. The harder part is knowing what to do next. Ask:Enact is being built to support that gap.
Ask:Enact is contributing as the prevention-focused software partner to the Aberdeen Integrated Prevention Pathways partnership, selected as a Scottish Government Test and Learn Prevention Pilot.
Aberdeen-based practitioners are stress-testing our alpha build ahead of the wider pilot.
