Category: Blogs

In 2018/19, 1,822 homeless applications were recorded as having been from people leaving prison, which represents five per cent of the total. It is likely that this figure does not represent the full scale of the problem, with applicants often unwilling to reveal their background. With discussion around more widespread early release of prisoners across the UK gathering momentum due to the pandemic, Martin Gavin – Homeless Network Scotland’s head of external relations – asks, ‘Could it be the time to break the cycle?’

Leaving prison – particularly after a lengthy sentence – is daunting in normal circumstances, and these are not normal circumstances. When a support provider described having to explain the nature, scale and significance of COVID-19 to a person leaving prison this week, it captured for me how disconnected someone can become inside, and how frightening it must be transitioning in the throes of a pandemic.

COVID-19 is causing real concern in prisons. Both prisoners and prison officers have very sadly died as a result of contracting the virus, and others feel trapped in an environment where self-isolation is near impossible. It’s understandable why early release is one of several measures mentioned in the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act. While the power to order early release is now in place, my understanding is there are no immediate plans to use that power; the caveat being, this is a fast-moving train.

Despite no concrete plan to release early, numbers up to 4000 have been circulating. I’ve been told that a more realistic estimate, should this happen at some point in the future, is 200 – 700 prisoners released, made up of people close to finishing their sentence or appropriate prisoners in one of the high-risk groups for COVID-19.

A large-scale release of people without accommodation waiting is potentially a challenge for councils and housing associations but there may be cause for a more positive take. Under the Shore Standards, government makes clear that housing services, as part of wider society, have a key role in ensuring people in the justice system and those leaving it get the support they need to make a new start and ensure better shared outcomes. Surely this is a further opportunity for landlords to show their mettle in this national emergency, as many associations have by identifying empty homes and voids for use as temporary accommodation at very short notice.

I learned this week that the first 72 hours represent the critical window for transforming a person’s chances of a successful transition. This is enough time for a bank account to be set up, people can be taken to appointments in order to avoid missing out on benefits, and arrangements put in place to discourage unhelpful contact with people or places linked to previous offending. Settled, safe accommodation sits at the heart of this process.

Second only to a roof, evidence points to the value of solid, well-resourced support services being in place straight away, able to react from the moment someone is released, being crucial to successful transition. More than 1500 prisoners leave jail each month, many from remand or short sentences, so organisations that support them are not panicking at the prospect of an additional cohort.

The good news is that strong partnerships providing this support exist already, are often long-established and where possible the process starts before someone is released.

Everything about programmes such as New Routes mentoring support for people leaving prison, managed by Wise Group and delivered by local partners, is aimed at reducing reoffending and with great success. Currently, not being able to meet prisoners routinely, New Routes providers are distributing ‘liberation packs’ that include a basic mobile phone, bus timetables and other practical items to help people negotiate the outside world, along with advice on benefits and accommodation plus telephone and email support. This can be enough to set someone on the right path.

At HMP Low Moss the prisoner support pathway starts inside jail, and is designed to offer holistic and person-centred support, from sentencing through to pre-release, on-release and after-release community support, which is co-ordinated by a Pathway Practitioner. The partnership covers all the bases, and includes Turning Point Scotland and Action for Children, among others.

In Edinburgh, Your Home is a partnership between Sacro, Four Square, Link Living, Streetwork and Y-People, that provides help to maximise income, benefits, improve budgeting skills and reduce debt as well as accessing Housing Options to secure social or other housing. The service has 35 staff and supported more than 900 people last year.

Prisoners are not routinely being released early, and the guidance suggests that other steps would be taken before this was even considered.

In the meantime, landlords could do worse than build those bridges and joint protocols talked about in the Shore Standards. Enhance existing relationships and seek out new collaboration, if not for this emergency, then for what will come after to disrupt the pattern of homelessness for people leaving prison.

Through effective joint working and information sharing, support for people making the transition from prison into proper housing could be – should be – straightforward. The community justice sector is based on strong partnerships. Associations can be confident that sector remains robust and prepared for any new developments if the services I spoke to this week are typical.

Article orginally published in Scottish Housing News on 16 April 2020.

The response from the homelessness sector to COVID-19 continues at pace. Assessing whether the measures introduced in the past two weeks are the right ones, and what aspects we might want to retain, must be guided by people with expertise both as practitioners and through their own lived experience, says Martin Gavin – head of external relations at Homeless Network Scotland.

What’s been done so far is so obviously the right reaction to a crisis on this scale – removing barriers, eliminating delay and reducing bureaucracy to save lives and maintain services in whatever form we can. As we move forward in this new reality the voice of people with their own experience of homelessness can fine-tune and adapt policies shaped in an emergency.

Great strides have been made in the past two years since the ‘Aye We Can’ research gave voice to more than 400 people with lived experience, feeding into the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group (Harsag). In December 2019, All in for Change launched in Edinburgh. Some of the 30 or so members of the ‘Change Team’ have personal experience of being homeless, others have frontline responsibilities in local authorities, housing associations and third sector support providers.

Facilitated by Homeless Network Scotland, Cyrenians and Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC), this Change Team is designed to place lived experience at the heart of system change. The inaugural meeting was attended by the Housing Minister, Kevin Stewart MSP, and the team had started supporting thinking around the Government’s Ending Homelessness Together plan before the pandemic took hold – setting out what’s working, and what’s getting in the way. This is proper co-production, bringing all the moving parts together, and is attracting attention beyond the homelessness sector. If the voice of lived experience matters when it’s ‘business as usual’ then it matters even more now.

COVID-19 was the theme at the most recent Change Team gathering. Some are concerned about the impact of this lockdown on their own mental health and the wellbeing of people they know. And key workers in the Change Team expressed guilt that they are ‘not doing enough’ (they are). 

The Change Team had three clear messages on COVID-19 and how it impacts on homelessness:

• How will housing applications be affected – faster, clearer information must reach people who need a house and those who support them. The Change Team can help with that. For people in hotels and temporary accommodation who are fast-tracked into housing, will furniture and starter packs be available?
• The team are seeing change at local micro-level, in streets and communities with more people and more community organisations getting involved. Can energy and resources be committed to ensure this collaboration continues?
• There’s an opportunity to assess and maybe retain remote and digital approaches to supporting people. For example, homelessness applications taken by phone. Digital tools and understanding of how to use them are not common to everyone, so a large training and support programme would be needed to make that work.

At the heart of All in for Change is the knowledge that services in the past have too often been designed ‘for’ people experiencing homelessness, rarely ‘by’ them. Far-reaching and potentially game-changing solutions are surfacing – how we evidence which of these are having the most impact and prevent abrogation of the best parts should be guided by people on the frontline.

Dr Beth Watts, a Senior Research Fellow at I-SPHERE, Heriot-Watt University and an expert on homelessness policy, summed up the current circumstances at the All in for Change meeting, saying: “We are currently in a critical and unusual window of opportunity in terms of having a positive impact on change around homeless services and delivery. We need to be bold and aspirational, shout about what is making a difference and what works.”

All in for Change is starting to gather evidence of what works, changes to policy and practice in recent weeks, and starting to build a picture of a new landscape in homelessness. If you would like to get involved in this work, get in touch.

Originally published 08 April 2020 in Scottish Housing News.

Martin Gavin, Head of External Relations at Homeless Network Scotland blogs on the Emergency Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill being debated in parliament on 1 April 2020. Originally published in Scottish Housing News.

Homelessness is unlikely to be one of the enduring memories of this pandemic. That significant statement pays tribute to rapid action over the past two weeks by governments, landlords, councils, health services and third sector organisations in bringing people inside who were sleeping rough, and quickly putting in place additional protection for people most at risk of homelessness over the immediate next phase. Maybe our response to homelessness will be viewed by historians as one of the early success stories of how society dealt with COVID-19?

However, we are still living in the moment. With months of disruption and genuine hardship still ahead, how can a legacy be avoided that speaks of an effective response to homelessness at the start of COVID-19, and then goes on to tell how we allowed it to creep back insidiously as months went by and the immediate danger passed?

The Scottish Government has published the Emergency Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill to be considered in Parliament today, 1st April. A core part of the Bill is steps to avoid people being evicted from their homes over the coming six months, something Homeless Network Scotland and many other organisations have pressed for since the scale of the current emergency came into view.

Key elements of the Bill include the following:

• Temporarily extending the notice period for all evictions to six months in most cases. Three months if the reason for eviction includes anti-social or criminal behaviour, or if the landlord or their family member needs to move into the property.
• Temporarily changing private rented sector repossession cases going before the First Tier Tribunal to be considered on a discretionary basis. This gives members of the tribunal more scope to take full account of the circumstances of the tenant before reaching a decision.
• Proceedings can carry on as normal if the tenant has abandoned the property.

It is intended that these steps support the security of renters across Scotland during the outbreak, allowing time to apply for and receive the financial support to ensure that rent can continue to be paid in the short to medium term.

It was inevitable that the pace and pattern of social housing allocations would be affected by the current emergency. With less housing turnover overall, RSLs like all workplaces, are affected by staff self-isolating, absent or remote working, impacting on the services they would normally provide.

Where this is the case we should respond with additional funding and support to enable RSLs do what they are so good at doing – providing people with the safety and security of a home. Indeed, there are examples already where small and large RSLs have implemented proactive, creative solutions to prioritise allocation of housing in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

All these actions matter because it cannot be overstated how traumatic this time is for people who are homeless or most at risk of it. Not just the relatively small numbers of people with no roof, but the thousands of people in shared spaces, hostels, B&Bs – sometimes in unfamiliar locations, cut off from loved ones or with patchy access to information. While this virus connects us all, some are left significantly more disconnected than others.

The measures in today’s emergency legislation are compassionate, fair and proportionate. They further strengthen what’s already been done to prevent rough sleeping and protect people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Now, while still desperately seeking the right responses to an unfolding emergency like no other, in quieter moments let’s also start to think about how we keep the fairer, better Scotland we are creating – home has never been so important.

Interested in the new alliance, how it came about and what it will aim to achieve? Read more in our our roadmap to alliance and our FAQs here:

David Ramsay is Change Lead at Homeless Network Scotland.

I’m sitting here at my desk in Glasgow and the weather is dreadful, I’m day-dreaming. My thoughts drift back to the many times I’ve been out in the rain with nowhere to go. These are the times I must not forget as we try to change the system that isn’t working.

I think of what I could have done differently and also what other people could have done to help.

I grew up on a housing estate on the south side of Glasgow, the early 80s with not much to do. Everyone around me was involved in some sort of trouble, either in school or with the police. This is the path I would follow.

Memories and photos are what defines the past, and how people remember the good and not so good times. The photos I don’t have are what sticks out for me. There’s a ten-year gap in my life and I feel this is a waste. Why did it happen?

Okay, where do I start…? I’ve always been a happy person and good around people. So don’t let the smile hide the hurt someone is feeling while trying to navigate this system.

I became involved with social workers from the age of 12 to 16, then I moved into the prison system until the age of 25. I became homeless at 30 due to my relationship ending, as I was struggling with my addiction again.

I couldn’t believe that becoming homeless was like going back to prison. My mental health was at rock bottom, and I couldn’t see any way out. Now I would have to fight my way through another system and all I was looking for was a house.

I had countless workers from all different health care providers without success. Why? What was being missed?

They were good people and really nice, they just never understood me or what I needed or wanted from them. They never asked me either.

I now believe they were delivering a service which had one aim – contain the issue, as long as it doesn’t get any worse it’s okay. I would rather they’d supported me to prevent things happening in the first place.

Maybe I was being offered what I needed but couldn’t see it because of all the barriers I had put up…was this worth a thought or was this my way of coping?

These barriers started to lift once I came into contact with people who believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself.

I became surrounded by people who encouraged me, challenged me in the right way and supported me when I needed it.

And how my life changed.

The first thing I noticed was I started to feel a part of something. I became more involved in my family, attending more family get-togethers. I was more involved with the community I lived in and I felt I had a place as a citizen of Glasgow. I felt alive for the first time and I was 38 years old.

I started volunteering with the Homeless Network with the aim of changing the current system. I can’t forget the feeling I had when I felt I was punished for not having a home.

I was in a new relationship and managed to bag myself a job after volunteering for a few years -my life was amazing.

The question is how many people are out there who are not receiving the support that is right for them and who have the ability to achieve the same as me?

When someone takes on the responsibility of a job which involves people, they must believe in themselves and others. Work with people and help them identify the strengths they have and give them the opportunity to explore themselves.

This is what happened to me and the results speak for themselves.

Employed: yes. Married: yes. And now I own my home.

Change is possible through prevention – if people are offered the right support at the right time and opportunities are available to them. Believe people can and want to change and they will believe you can help them do it.