Cornwall Roadshow

19th August 2008

Cathy HadfieldSpecialist Advisor, Homelessness

Regional Resource Team

• Three Regional Resource Teams• North Team – covering North West,

Yorkshire and Humberside and North East• Midlands Team – covering East and West

Midlands• Southern Team – covering East, South

East and South West

Southern Team

• Helen Keats – Head of Service

• David Powell – Supporting People

• Tracey Brushett – Homelessness

• Tracy Hendren – Homelessness

• Cathy Hadfield - Homelessness

Regional Resource Team

• To support and co-ordinate work between the GOs and Communities and Local Government

To work with LAs to • Deliver the TA target• Address rough sleeping• Support Places of Change programme• Ensure health needs of vulnerable clients are identified

and services appropriately commissioned• Support overcrowding pathfinders• Promote enhanced housing options and links to

employment• Highlight good practice around worklessness in social

housing• Ensure homelessness prevention remains a key priority

for commissioners and partners

National Picture

Cornwall Roadshow 19th August 2008

Tracy HendrenSpecialist Advisor, Homelessness

Key Themes Looking Forward

• The Housing and Regeneration Bill (Housing Green Paper);

• Ensuring social housing acts as a platform for economic and social mobility (Hills review);

• Regulation of social housing to encourage better management, new supply and tenant empowerment (Cave review);

• Joining up delivery of housing and regeneration (Homes and Communities Agency);

5 Year Strategy to Reduce Homelessness

Preventinghomelessness

Tackling widercauses & symptoms

Improved access tosettled homes

Sustaining reductionsIn rough sleeping

Supporting vulnerable people

Halve use of temporary

accommodation by 2010

Trends: homelessness and temporary accommodation

• 79,500 households were living in temporary accommodation in England on 31 December 2007

• Down by 11% compared to the same time last year and under 80,000 for the first time since 2001

• Homelessness acceptances in England down from around 135,000 in 2003/04 to 73,000 in 2006/07

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Homelessness prevention: continued focus

Local authority Homelessness Strategies - legislative requirement to publish revised strategies this year (if not revision has been done since original strategy in July 2003)

Increased investment - to support services such as mediation, rent deposits and home visits: £200m for local authorities and voluntary sector over next 3 years – prevention grant

Continued focus on implementing good practice guide and prevention toolkit

Debt advice: key relationship between local authorities and Citizens’ Advice Bureaux

New National Housing Advice Service – joint working agreements between Shelter and Citizen’s Advice Bureau

Homelessness prevention:Feedback from local authorities

Most effective interventions (local authority survey 2007):

Rent Deposit or Rent Bond Schemes

Mediation/Counselling

Working with existing or prospective landlords to provide other housing solutions

Home Visits to discuss options with parents or friends or relatives who may exclude part of their household

Local “Homelessness Prevention Fund”

Early Advice

Temporary Accommodation - next steps

Temporary Accommodation Action Plans

Supply and Demand Models

2007 LA Survey – most effective activities to reduce Temporary Accommodation:

Increased Prevention Improved RSL nomination arrangements Making use of private sector TA visiting programme to provide options advice Increasing percentage of lettings to homelessness Conversion of own stock TA

Rough sleeping

• Work underway to update the rough sleeping strategy 10 years on

• Will focus on renewed drive to reduce numbers on the streets, alongside action to improve outcomes for former rough sleepers

• Updated local authority homelessness strategies: need to include focus on single homeless

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Rough Sleeping in Rest of England Rough Sleeping in London

“Places of Change”

• £90million invested in around 178 projects

• Not just a housing pathway but Engagement, Education, Employment

• Delivering a culture change - “Not more beds but better beds”

• Investing a further £70million in 2008-11

Hostels will cease to be places of last resort, but instead will be centres of excellence and choice which positively change lives

Tackling youth homelessness

• Commitment to end, by 2010, the use of bed and breakfast accommodation for 16 and 17 year olds

• 16 and 17 year olds in B&B fallen by almost half from approx 1,000 in September 2006 to 550 in December 2007

• Improved access to homelessness mediation across the country

• Creation of a national supported lodgings development scheme providing accommodation, advice and mediation services

• Centres of Excellence created to share good practice – South West - Wilthshire

• Best practice website launched – www.communities.gov.uk/youthhomelessness

Related agendas …

• Tackling overcrowding – new action plan with £15m to support 38 pathfinders

• Independent review of private rented housing to deliver a better product

• The Extra Enhanced Housing Options have been confirmed, including linking housing and employment advice

• Working Neighbourhood Fund £1.5 billion programme working in most deprived areas: important for housing sector to engage