A model for prevention - Newcastle
A lot has been written about Newcastle's Active Inclusion homelessness response. They won a prestigious World habitat award in 2020.
Amidst the severe budget cuts brought about by the UK's austerity measures which started more than a decade ago, the Active Inclusion Newcastle initiative has brought together multiple partners focusing on homelessness prevention.
The
interesting element of this approach from a Council perspective is that the
homelessness and housing team (driven by the wonderful Neil Munslow) works
across council to connect in with people and programs that focus on many
elements of a person's life journey - effectively busting internal silos.
As
a council worker, I have often reflected on the fact that we are often quite
good at reaching out into the community but don't pay enough attention to, or
place value, on all the things our own council delivers or holds responsibility
for (particularly those things that are not directly labelled 'homelessness
response').
I
think Newcastle is a great example of what can be achieved when you focus on working with both external
and internal partners.
Despite
enduring huge budget cuts, Newcastle has relatively low homelessness/rough
sleeping numbers - and this could be attributable to this amazing suite of
work.
Learning
about their approach also left me thinking about how councils might only focus
on homelessness when at crisis point. But often this is too late, there is so
much that can be done before getting there - however we need foresight to do
something.
The
Active
Newcastle 2021-22 briefing note covers Newcastle's approach and actions.
Below is a paste from that documents covering some of their actions.
- Understand
the local impact – based on
our context and the life courses, pathways and risk triggers that affect
Newcastle residents
- Segment
need – to provide proportionate,
personally relevant and cost-effective responses
- Align
budget processes to support
the most vulnerable to prevent crisis – during 2021-22 we and partners
advised 27,555 people on welfare benefits, debt and housing
- Develop
citywide consensus and partnership responses – 144 services and organisations
participate in our Financial Inclusion Group and Homelessness Prevention
Forum. Routinely monitoring and reviewing with partners helps us to
understand and show how we use our limited resources to make a positive
difference to improve residents’ lives and to identify opportunities for
improvement and innovation
- Provide
infrastructure support –
information, training and workforce development to help partners who are
not specialists in financial inclusion and homelessness prevention to
identify risk and act to prevent crisis, rather than just to refer to
crisis services
- Provide
partnerships and protocols –
agreed ways of working that give consistent governance and practice to
increase financial inclusion and prevent homelessness
- Provide
universal information to prevent residents becoming more vulnerable – including web information visited 92,994
times. Other examples of this information are available online here
- Adapt
core council directly delivered and commissioned specialist support, care
and therapeutic services for residents who are known to be vulnerable – to enable them to identify and prevent
the risk of financial exclusion and homelessness
- Target
support to shield the most vulnerable and to prevent crisis – from our specialist financial inclusion,
homelessness prevention and employment advice and support services. This
is supported by the Newcastle Gateway web-based system which helps to
match 24,415 residents with 67 services by 544 staff users
- Catch
residents who are ‘not known’ to be at risk through open access
information and advice services –
learning how we can identify risk and prevent crisis earlier
- Carry
out systematic exception reporting – to
support collective reviews of why we haven’t prevented financial exclusion
or homelessness, e.g. because of performance, policy, provision or commissioning
issues, and problem solving to avoid repeat cases
- Consider
the balance of individual, systemic and structural causes of exclusion
It was reading about all this that brought me to Newcastle - and thanks to Neil and his team (James, Jemma, Stephen, Scott and Sarah) who hosted me at the Cherry Tree View accommodation site on 3/10)
However,
sitting around the table with the team I got an insight into something that
doesn't come across in papers and salutations. A key driver of success is
keeping a close ear to the ground.
As
Neil put it:
"The
2002 Homelessness Act required all local authorities to write a homelessness
strategy, but we realised that five years is a long time and no one can predict
what will happen.
"You
need to do your work in real time and relate individual cases to policy and
resource allocation."
***
Here
are some more resources
…
I
was really fortunate to meet Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick from Herriot-Watt
university (I felt like a bit of a fan girl). She has published significantly
on homelessness and her colleagues undertook an evaluation of Active Newcastle
a few years ago.
Suzanne
and Peter Mackie from Cardiff also published a paper about prevention that
outlines a really simple, replicable, five stage approach
Advancing
a Five-Stage Typology of Homelessness Prevention
World Habitat Blog (11 October 2022)
ZERO
evictions from 27,000 social housing tenancies: How Newcastle is leading the
way
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