WIREDGOV

Prevention is always better than cure and preventing homelessness before it occurs should be the preferred course of action. This not only protects people from the trauma of homelessness but is more cost effective and reduces pressure on public services.

Having identified a need for a step-change in efforts to prevent homelessness in England, Homeless Link’s discussions with key stakeholders revealed concerns that homelessness funding and actions were largely focused on crisis interventions, and mitigating the impacts on people who are already homeless or sleeping rough. Sector players were keen that homelessness intervention should shift further upstream.

Consequently, Homeless Link secured a National Lottery Community Fund grant to lay the groundwork for a potential new programme of sector support to radically advance local homelessness prevention across England, engaging Cardiff and Heriot-Watt universities to lead the research element of this work.

We know that prevention is delivered inconsistently within our current system. Combined with the shortage of truly affordable housing, this has created a cycle of worsening need, with new rafts of people turning to the homelessness system for support. With many supported accommodation providers at capacity, too few affordable tenancies for people experiencing homelessness to move into, and even emergency accommodation struggling to meet demand, the system has bottlenecked. With it, the cost of meeting statutory duties has spiralled, and rough sleeping rates have skyrocketed.

Clearly, as the Government looks to establish its homelessness strategy, prevention is the golden thread that must run throughout. Equally, there are clear implications for funders. With many considering their role in the homelessness sector funding landscape, they will be asking how their holistic funding can work upstream of social challenges and support the green shoots of change emerging in local communities.

Prevention Into Action research launched

In this context, it’s vital that we can articulate the current state of prevention across the sector, share what works and highlight the barriers faced.

The new Prevention Into Action research launched today does exactly this. Based on a survey with local authorities and Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) providers across the homelessness sector, semi-structured interviews with representatives of promising prevention practice and an in-person workshop, the research assesses the interventions in place across England to prevent homelessness and identifies gaps and barriers to current prevention. It also highlights opportunities to step-up prevention efforts and cites examples of identified good practice.

Quotation: Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Director of Heriot-Watt University’s Institute for Social Policy, Housing and Equalities Research (I-SPHERE)

To assist an understanding of what qualifies as prevention, enabling preventative practice to be embedded into strategic planning, the research uses a ‘typology’, which classifies homelessness prevention using five points in time. These range from the earliest opportunities to prevent people becoming homeless to later prevention when people are at more imminent risk and include the prevention of longer-term or repeat homelessness.

The findings make clear that insufficient prevention work exists at all stages of the typology, but particularly at the earlier upstream stage. The research acknowledges the links between this lack of prevention and England’s challenging structural climate, including many local authorities’ dire financial situation, problematic (private rented sector) eviction rates, and shortfalls in access to suitable, affordable housing, alongside the demands of rising homelessness.

These pressures have made it difficult to commit to investment in upstream prevention, which may not show immediate impacts and in- year savings. When coupled with an understandable prioritisation of immediate needs through crisis-stage interventions, local authority and voluntary sector actions on homelessness seem to be shifting further downstream, to the neglect of more upstream interventions. The research revealed frustrations that opportunities for earlier intervention were not being grasped.

The research reported a general lack of coordination and cross-sector partnership working, sending the clear message that public services other than local authority housing teams – health, social and education services, the criminal justice system and the Home Office – should play a more active role, embedding prevention into their ways of working. Similarly, the Labour government’s inter-ministerial group on homelessness and rough sleepingmust have prevention at its heart, ensuring all departments play their role in ending homelessness for good.

Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Heriot-Watt University

Despite the challenges, the research found many examples of promising local prevention practice, including councils establishing new roles to support people leaving state institutions; voluntary and community organisations harnessing funding, volunteer efforts and local partnerships to help cohorts at greater risk, such as young people and newly recognised refugees; and local solutions to increase the supply of quality emergency and temporary accommodation. This variety of promising interventions represent pragmatic efforts to work around system constraints and provide an encouraging platform for a systematic approach to homelessness prevention in England.

Gaps and opportunities for change

Importantly, the research also identifies six opportunities for a step-change in locally-led homelessness prevention:

1. Act on universal prevention. By ensuring ‘protective factors’ that can reduce homelessness across the whole population, such as decent incomes, secure homes, good health, and education and skills.
2. Prioritise upstream prevention. By early identification of and support for vulnerable and at-risk groups.
3. Improve downstream prevention. Including by following examples of councils that have found creative ways to work within existing constraints.
4. Implement specialist prevention measures. For groups such as non-UK nationals, people with complex support needs, survivors of domestic abuse and single people not legally classed as a priority for housing.
5. Enhance partnership working with the voluntary and community sector and people with lived experience of homelessness.
6. Develop upstream funding opportunities. Enabling the development and evaluation of new, expanded and innovative preventative services.

Every person pushed into homelessness is a person facing trauma that will echo throughout their lives, with great cost on their mental and physical health, and the public purse. Effective homelessness prevention can avoid this entirely, keeping people in their own homes and reserving emergency accommodation for genuine emergencies. This research provides key learning that can influence coordinated prevention practice at both a local and national level.