Reshaping homelessness support
Local authority temporary accommodation budgets are stretched to the limit as demand for homelessness services continues to rise. So, what can be done to ease the load?
STRATEGY
Image: Istock
Alistair Sharpe-Neal
Senior Consultant, Campbell Tickell
Andy Gale
Associate, Campbell Tickell
Alistair Sharpe-Neal
Senior Consultant, Campbell Tickell
Andy Gale
Associate, Campbell Tickell
Issue 67 | September 2023
Homelessness is daunting for those facing or experiencing it and demand for frontline service support has become overwhelming. Yet, should service providers fail to explain their decision making or meet timelines despite a mountainous backlog of casework, there is risk of resource-intensive challenge and litigation, or politically charged debate that often prevents the adoption of pragmatic overall responses.
Scale of the challenge
The impact of Covid, ongoing global conflicts and the acute rise in the cost of housing and day-to-day living has placed statutory homelessness services at, and in many cases well beyond, full stretch. Local authorities are experiencing significant pressures on their temporary accommodation budgets and often must find unsustainable levels of additional funding to provide emergency accommodation within the private sector. As a result, for some private landlords this has become an opportunistic and profitable income stream.
The government’s focus on rough sleeping in the last three years has contributed towards the crisis, with tackling statutory homelessness almost seen as an afterthought.
It feels as though services are hanging over the precipice with no cavalry riding to the rescue. But there never is. So, what are the practical and realistic steps that can be taken to pull back from the brink?
“The impact of Covid, ongoing global conflicts and the acute rise in the cost of housing and day-to-day living has placed statutory homelessness services at, and in many cases well beyond, full stretch.”
Investment is vital
Upfront investment in frontline teams will reduce direct and indirect costs overall. Identifying who is truly in crisis at the first point of contact is critical. Whether this means carving out more time to listen and build trust with a potentially homeless caller within a transaction-driven contact centre, or re-establishing face-to-face services that may have been reduced in response to Covid.
Over-recruiting and rolling recruitment will ensure teams remain at full strength in what is a high-turnover environment, while hiring temporary specialist staff to clear processing backlogs will take the pressure off core teams and enable them to work within a manageable caseload.
Improvement focus
While investing in new systems and software may seem appealing, in reality, the grass on the other side is never easier to digest than your own. So, investing in existing systems provision by properly embedding workflow and case management, and ensuring staff are fully trained in process and compliance to build skills and confidence in their own decision making, should help ease the load.
Reducing the administrative burden with the system also enables resources to be refocused on prevention-based activity, in negotiating with landlords and parents for example. Diverting a fraction of the financial resources currently supporting B&B and nightly rate temporary accommodation (TA), could fund a range of incentive schemes to enable people to remain within their current home.
Rigorous real-time monitoring and control at each decision point of the customer journey is critical in ensuring that assessments are thorough, TA placement decisions are timely and evidence-based, and that all potential options are regularly considered to move people to more secure housing solutions.
Too often, the wider housing ‘model’ functions as a set of distinct components, each with subtly different objectives and measures of success, when what is needed more than ever is a whole-system approach.
Realistic solutions
Housing options are too often focused on directing people towards social housing as the prime solution — even though there is no realistic prospect of accessing it in the numbers required. This results in unsustainable waiting lists and in staff resource maintaining them when more realistic options should be promoted. Allocations schemes often lack the flexibility or the levers to move people on from temporary accommodation as a priority.
The blend of temporary accommodation available is often not flexible in responding to changing need and demand. Equally, the pool of available affordable accommodation is seldom managed as a resource in its entirety, enabling it to flex and maximise its effectiveness, by capitalising on the release of stock from a retrenching private rental sector, for example.
An ‘invest-to-sustain' strategy based on a range of individual resource inputs will enable frontline services to re-establish control and to adopt the prevention-based approach that will be more responsive to future demand. Equally, investment in a whole-system approach will increase the overall capacity of the housing ‘model’ to respond, in keeping people away from homelessness crisis, and frontline services away from the cliff edge.
“Housing options are too often focused on directing people towards social housing as the prime solution — even though there is no realistic prospect of accessing it in the numbers required.”
