A laser focus on rough sleeping

Lambeth is a young, diverse and transitory borough  of around 300,000 residents, including Vauxhall, Waterloo, Clapham and Brixton. It includes some of richest parts of country  and number of the poorest.

It was great to meet up with Lambeth’s head of commissioning, Paul Davis, on 19 October and hear about their extremely targeted approach in addressing rough sleeping.

While the good news is that numbers of people sleeping on the streets are not as high as other places (currently around 10 to 20 - it used to be much higher), I thought Lambeth’s experience and approach is a very good example of why it is important to maintain commitment in addressing rough sleeping and keep a consistent approach in tackling long term issues, rather than just waiting for a crisis.

To do this, Lambeth maintains a street outreach team (a team of six to seven, working seven days) and has brought in a number of key specialist roles that work with the outreach team to meet the specific needs of the people they see. These roles fill gaps and link the work of the outreach team with the rest of council.

I have often thought about the mix of roles we employ in local government and whether we can do things better. Here are some of the more specialised positions at Lambeth...

* Approved mental health professional.

Social worker or nurse with extra training to do mental health assessments. More experience and power to section someone.

Role is employed by council to sit with homelessness services and linked to outreach service.

This kind of work takes a lot of effort. The worker engages personally. They get to know people individually and build relationships, working with health teams and other partners.  

In 18 months have got down from 10 entrenched rough sleeper to four.

* Street population coordinator (rough sleeping coordinator)

Liaises with the outreach team, other parts of council, businesses, faith groups, anyone to find out who is sleeping out and find hidden homeless.

Role is not part of street outreach team but regularly goes out with them.  

Maintains laser focus on wider rough sleeping. Knowing where people are from, what circumstances.

They are the eyes and ears for the council. Play a linkage role

You need the right kind of person to do this role - who understands homelessness and the ability and confidence to do partnership working.

* Public protection officer

Works alongside the street outreach team, focusing on problematic behaviour issues and anti-social behaviour.

Works directly with people who are congregating at locations

Deliver talks at hostels about begging, sitting on streets, drinking.

* Prison release navigator

Position employed by council, the position bridges gaps between council, prisons and housing teams as well as other organisations working in criminal justice area.

Good results from proactive work. In the last year, the outreach team has seen only one person on the streets who has come out of prison.

* Job Navigators

Work within the Council’s night shelter for people with no recourse to public funds (mostly immigrants).

Work directly with people to understand their skills and past work experience and help them to find employment.

*****

Coordination - 'Task and target meetings'

To assist coordination, work with multiple stakeholders is managed through regular ‘Task and Target’ meetings, where the council gets around the table with police, social care, day centres, outreach teams, hostel providers. Everyone comes with names and issues.

The group discuss 35 people in a meeting. Everyone at  the meeting has an idea of why someone is there, what their situation is. Understand the reason why a person not being housed. Up to people around the table to play their part.

Enforcement has failed dismally in the past and the team agrees.

Paul’s top tips for councils working to address homelessness

• Have a dedicated resource to do this work. Don't put it on top of other responsibilities.
• Know your local situation. Do needs assessment. Ask charitable organisations to help you. Really talk to people who are rough sleeping. Find out what their issues really are. Then you have an incontrovertible truth
• Create a coproduced rough sleeping strategy. Get health services, business, anyone who is affected by homelessness to cowrite it with people experiencing homelessness. This sets up joint responsibility and then you can work together to implement it. Have quarterly board meetings and work together.
• Remember - it's not just housing impacting people, it a whole lot of things.