Author: Jamie Milne

#AllinForChange on road again to Take Temperature of homelessness

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The All in For Change team of people with personal and professional experience of homelessness is touring Scotland again to find out what’s happening on the ground in services — against a backdrop of unprecedented housing pressures.

The Change team will hold free events in Aberdeen, Greenock, Falkirk, Kirkcaldy and Clydebank on the Taking the Temperature National Roadshow – where they will hear about local issues and solutions before sharing their findings with the Scottish Government.

They want to meet and learn from frontline workers and people who have experienced homelessness as well as local authority staff, managers and councillors. And they are keen for people working in health, social care, social work, addiction and criminal justice to come along — the events are open to anyone who can share their insights.

Prevention is a key theme of the roadshow, as new duties in the upcoming Housing Bill will require the wider public sector to intervene earlier to stop people becoming homeless. The Change Team played a key role in developing the ‘Ask and Act’ duties.

Housing supply and use of temporary accommodation are also up for discussion at the free informal events in February and March.

The team is made up of people who know what homelessness looks and feels like through lived or frontline work experience. Homeless Network Scotland and Cyrenians facilitate All in For Change, which is funded by the Scottish Government and Frontline Network.

Roadshow tour dates

  • Aberdeenshire Council HQ (in Aberdeen) — Tuesday, 20 February    
  • Greenock, Old Auction Rooms — Thursday, 22 February
  • Kirkcaldy, Fife, New Volunteer House — Tuesday, 5 March
  • Falkirk, Arnotdale House — Thursday, 7 March
  • Clydebank, Awestruck Academy — Thursday, 14 March

Book your place for the roadshow events

Suzie McIlloney, Rapid Rehousing Transition Plan Officer at South Ayrshire Council, is also a member of the Change Team.

She said: “We must listen and really hear what people are telling us through their experiences of homelessness. The Roadshows offer an opportunity for further insight into where we can do better but also what worked well.

“Travelling in the direction of being trauma informed and trauma responsive, we need to remind ourselves that when facing uncertainties, people need caring and compassionate connections.

“I got involved with the All in For Change Team because I see the value in bringing policymaking and lived experience together to drive forward real change.

“The more opportunities we have to work closer together, the better the outcomes are for people, services, and communities.

“People thrive off hope, purpose and connection and we can often overlook the significant role communities play in this. I believe everyone should have a place of their own to call home, it is the foundation for people to thrive and live well.

“There is an appetite for change so let’s not lose momentum.”

Change Lead Viki Fox has experienced homelessness and is now Policy and Participation Manager with Cyrenians.

She said: “We are really excited to be hosting our second national roadshow. When I started with the Change Team back in 2019, the roadshows were a key focus as we really wanted to talk to, and learn from, others living and working within the homeless sector throughout Scotland. 

“Contexts and challenges are very different in each area and it is important that we hear this and can feed it back to the Scottish Government. 

“During the pandemic we were doing this online, but nothing beats meeting people in person and having the opportunity to learn from each other. 

“Having experienced homelessness myself and now working for Cyrenians, I know that using this knowledge and hearing about what is working well  in different localities is invaluable if we are to end homelessness in Scotland.”

Paul McLennan, Minister for Housing, said: “Since taking up office, I’ve met with many Housing Convenors across the country to hear about the issues in their area, but these are only views from one perspective.

“I’m interested to hear from people with lived experience and frontline workers, particularly in relation to the barriers they encounter.  

“As we prepare to introduce new homelessness prevention duties, I want to know what people have been through and what works in preventing homelessness from happening in the first place. I’m glad to see the roadshow locations include some more rural communities.

“I’m looking forward to joining the Change Team in Kirkcaldy and hearing some peoples’ experiences first hand.”

The Roadshow events are in five Housing Options Hubs covering local authorities including Aberdeenshire, Inverclyde, Fife, Falkirk and West Dunbartonshire.

The Team will also use the Roadshow to hear evidence of whether the 4 New Directions they have developed to reduce homelessness have been adopted – and where there are barriers.

The directions, designed to help achieve the aims of the Scottish Government Ending Homelessness Together action plan, include co-ordinating services so people don’t have to keep repeating their story when looking for support, and overturning outdated stereotypes of homelessness.

Homelessness is neither a personal choice or inevitable

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Homeless Network Scotland’s chief executive Maggie Brunjes, and Prof Andrea E Williamson from the University of Glasgow co-authored an editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published this month.

It highlights the stubborn collective consciousness that continues to divorce homelessness from the larger health and economic inequality that causes it – and encourages health professionals to adopt an ‘inclusion health’ approach that can help reduce the unacceptably poor health outcomes among people affected by homelessness. Find the BMJ article here.

Read the full article here

Fair Way Scotland: Not just a ‘fluffy’ coalition doing nice things

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Fair Way Scotland is a partnership of third sector organisations which aims to combat destitution and homelessness among people denied access to support on account of their immigration status — a state of affairs driven by hostile UK Government policy.

The partnership works to provide people with safe housing in community-based properties, with linked cash payments, access to legal advice and other support. This helps people to regularise their immigration status and access work or statutory support where permitted.

Homeless Network Scotland’s new Programme Advisor Hazel MacIver shares her initial impressions of the programme and sets out how the determination and positivity of its partners, allied to the programme’s evidence-based approach, is achieving tangible results.

“It’s hard to believe that in this day and age it is actual government policy that some people who come to the UK are not allowed to access any state benefits but are also not allowed to work. 

“I find it hard to comprehend because why would we design a situation which bakes in destitution as an outcome or drives people into the exploitative arms of people who are happy to make a profit from their misery?

“I understand the political pressures to limit access to state benefits but to also say you can’t work either? I find that incomprehensible. Which is why Scotland has Fair Way.

“It is a consortium of organisations that include Refugee Sanctuary Scotland, Scottish Refugee Council, Simon Community Scotland, Turning Point Scotland, Homeless Network Scotland, Joseph Rowntree Trust and I-Sphere (housing experts at Heriot-Watt University).

“All these organisations have their own boards, identities, funding etc and have come together under the joint umbrella of Fair Way Scotland to provide specialist legal advice, support and advice and a safe place to stay for people who are either destitute or on the cusp of it.

“But more than that, JRF and I-Sphere are involved to evaluate the work of Fair Way and gather hard data to better understand this policy area in Scotland.

“This isn’t just a ‘fluffy’ coalition doing nice things.

“For a start it is no mean feat to get a group of organisations working together in this way. It takes a massive commitment to stay together and work well together — it is far easier to split apart.

“And secondly, the evaluation and learning side of it gives it an edge that will hopefully inform how we can do things better in the future. Because there is a better way of doing things for sure than current UK government policy.”

⏩ Read about the first year of Fair Way Scotland

Homeless Network Scotland response to Scottish Budget cuts on affordable housing

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Homeless Network Scotland is deeply concerned by cuts to affordable housing spending announced in the 2024-2025 Budget. This comes despite consistent and united warnings on the urgent need to tackle a spiralling housing crisis which is holding back people and communities.

Without more homes, we exclude thousands of people in Scotland from equality, opportunity and community – the three priorities of the Scottish Government’s budget.

The UK Government has not helped the situation by reducing capital funding in real terms to Scottish Government. But the Scottish Government has chosen to cut further, putting paid to any real prospect of ensuring everyone in Scotland has the home they need. 

Cutting investment in affordable housing by £200million is unexpected and puts the government’s affordable housing building targets at risk. This decision risks undoing all the progress Scottish Government and its partners have made towards ending homelessness and rough sleeping in the last decade.

Maggie Brunjes, chief executive of Homeless Network Scotland said: “There is no route towards ending homelessness that doesn’t include building more affordable housing.

“We can’t prevent homelessness without more homes. We can’t scale up Housing First without more homes. We can’t get kids out of temporary accommodation.

“We can’t get single men out of hotel rooms, B&Bs and other inadequate temporary places. We can’t prevent destitution among people seeking sanctuary or to settle in Scotland. And we can’t end poverty and child poverty without more homes.

“The Scottish Government has previously shown bold commitment to ending homelessness through the ambitions set out with COSLA in the joint Ending Homelessness Together Plan.

“Adequate long-term funding is needed to ensure all those ambitions become reality and avoid slipping backwards after years of progress. It would be a tragedy to see that happening in the same year that a Housing Bill containing hard-wrought new prevention duties is introduced to parliament.”

The Scottish Government’s continued support for Rapid Rehousing and Housing First approaches – which get people out of temporary accommodation quickly and help people facing multiple disadvantages by providing flexible wraparound support along with a settled home – is welcome.

But both these strategies need long-term investment so local authorities can make them work – and evidence has shown time and time again that they do work. But most of all, they need housing.

Scottish Government, local councils and charities almost ended rough sleeping during the Covid lockdown in 2020. And through careful planning and reprovisioning, the same partners enabled the safe closure of the remaining ‘shared air’ dormitory-style night shelters in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Three years later, rough sleeping is on the rise along with the threat of unregulated, unsafe night shelter provision re-emerging – and this time without the support of the wider homelessness sector.

This provides an illustration of what lies ahead. Poverty drives homelessness when housing supply doesn’t meet demand. The risk of rough sleeping increases for those at the hardest edge of inequality.

Scotland has some of the strongest homelessness rights anywhere and the Scottish Government can be proud of that record, as well as progressive changes to income tax announced in the Budget, which are a step towards creating the fairer society we all want. Against a backdrop of constrained funding, making better use of the tax levers already within its control is more important than ever.

Failing to provide adequate resources now, for the solutions to ending homelessness which we know are within our grasp, means thousands of people will continue to wait for settled housing, and all the associated health and wellbeing benefits that brings.

It is vital that we all now work together to maximise what we can do with the resources we have – and to find new investment opportunities for housing in Scotland. Scottish Government needs to look at what needs to be done to meet housing need and to tackle poverty and how to achieve this as a matter of urgency.

Everyone Home urges budget focus on homelessness and housing

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A coalition of organisations including the Everyone Home collective has urged the Scottish Government to use the budget to address a growing housing and homelessness emergency. 

Forty organisations wrote an open letter to Finance Secretary Shona Robison calling for urgent support to address an “escalating homelessness crisis”. 

They warn that although the Scottish Government has made strong commitments to ending homelessness over the past few years, growing demand and limited resourcing has left local authorities unable to cope.

Read the full letter