Key Elements for a Successful Local Homeless Strategy

How Europe can support local authorities to improve the fight against homelessness

EU Seminar organised by

FEANTSA

&

EU Committee of the Regions

Brussels, Friday 1 June 2007

Session 1: Institutional Context

Moving on up?How addressing homelessness at the local

level can influence national strategy

Presented by

Mr. Dáithí Downey

Deputy Director,

Head of Policy & Service Delivery

Homeless Agency

Background to our story……

• Irish economic context:– Tiger Economy (’96 –’01) Economic growth and wealth creation, Asset (housing) and

Consumer boom (’02- present), Credit growth (equity withdrawl), Euro zone impact.

• Irish social context:– Higher prosperity, deepened inequality, ‘crisis’ in social infrastructure and protection, housing

access and affordability

• Irish political context– General election 2007

– Social partnership agreement for 10 years: Towards 2016

Irish national policy on homelessness

• Homelessness – An Integrated Stratey (2000)– Homeless Agency Partnership (2001)– Establishment of 34 Local Homeless Forums (2001)

• Homelessness Preventative Strategy (2002)– Inter-agency protocols (e.g. discharge policies and procedures)

• Review of Homeless Strategy (2006)– Extensive and in depth stakeholder analysis including service users– Comprehensive suite of recommendations

• Revised Government Policy and Strategy (Qtr 4 of 2007)– 5 priority areas: provision of long-term accommodation; appropriate local treatment of

homelessness countrywide; case management approach for homeless individuals; improved coordination of capital and revenue funding; and better data on the extent, nature and causes of homelessness.

Institutional network for Homeless Agency PartnershipInstitutional network for Homeless Agency Partnership

The Cross Departmental Team on Homelessness

(Depts. Family & Social Affairs, Environment (chair), Health & Children, Finance, Education & Science,

Community & Rural, also Irish Prison Service and the Probation and Welfare Service)

Cabinet Sub-Committee on Social Inclusion

GovernmentGovernment

NGO Sector•Community & Voluntary •Housing Associations

Statutory Sector• Irish Prison Service• Education and Training• Health Service Exec• Local Authorities• Probation and Welfare• FAS

National Homelessness Consultative Committee

2007

Extent of ‘assessed’ homelessness?

Counted In, 2005– Third periodic assessment on homelessness in Dublin conducted

as part of the national tri-annual Assessment of Housing Need

1. 2,015 individuals reported being homeless

2. 1,552 adults reported being homeless

3. 19% decrease on number of people

reported as homeless between 2002 and 2005

National/Local Inter-relations:how is partnership working in Ireland?

• Irish Social Partnership model is c. 20yrs old – institutionally and politically established at national level and deployed as local area-based partnerships

– Political and administrative focus on inter-agency partnership working at the local level across key areas including: drugs; spatial depreviation and urban regeneration; labour market activation; and local anti-poverty and community development work.

• Homeless Agency (HA) Partnership is an example of ‘joined-up government’ at local level that includes the Third sector (NGO)

• HA Partnership is more than a straightforward one-to-one partnership arrangement

– Composed of many actors operating in and across a complex network of relations

Making and managing change within and across partners

• Active network management is required to make complex partnerships work

• Means active hierarchial steering and process management across the partnership– HA Board, Consultative Forum, Executive and Service Provider

Networks

• Ability to recognise uncertainty and complexity in decision making:– Institutional (e.g. Irish Cabinet Sub-Comittee on Social Inclusion)– Strategic (e.g. national policy frameworks)– Content (e.g. HA action plan)

The realpolitik of making it work

• Extent of hierarchial steering (national and local)

• Extent of active network management: incentives for actors with differences in power and frames of reference

• Negotiating shared goals: perceptions and behaviour of actors is important

• Negotiate and agree ‘joined-up thinking’

• The win? Agreed aims, actions and timelines for same – the ‘action plan’

The ‘win’ of partnership working..

Three Homeless Agency Action Plans to date:

1. Shaping the Future 2001-2003

2. Making it Home 2004-2006

3. A Key to the Door 2007-2010

By 2010, long-term homelessness and the need for people to sleep rough will be eliminated in Dublin

The risk of a person or family becoming homeless will be minimal due to effective preventative policies and services

Where it does occur, homelessness will be short-term and all people who

are homeless will be assiated into appropriate housing and the realisation

of their full potential and rights

Agreed vision

Agreed strategic aims

• Prevent people from becoming homeless

• Provide effective services in each local area to address the acciommodation, housing and health needs of people in that area

• Provide long-term housing, with appropriate supports as required for people who are homeless

Future challenges…

• Changing profile and support needs of people experiencing homelessness

– (women, families with children, single adult men, migrants, young persons and the elderly)

• Improve access to permanent long-term housing and deliver new social housing stock

• Access to mainstream primary healthcare, in particular mental health and addiction services

• Effective prevention of homelessness

• Delivery mechanisms – funding regime and agency function

Local impacts nationally…internationally?

• Key Homeless Agency milestones achieved since 2000 – – Building confidence in the Vision for 2010– Re-inforced importance of hierarchial steering and active network and

process management within HA Partnership– Continued political support and resource allocation

• Homeless Agency action plan to 2010– Example of best-practices locally that can be adopted nationally– New National Homeless Policy and Strategy (in 2007)

• Role of EU to support local actors?– Hierarchial steering required from EU on homelessness– Supra-national national local– Example: EU typology of homelessness and housing exclusion – ETHOS model.