Category: News

The Launch of Housing First Academy

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Maggie Brünjes, Chief Executive of Homeless Network Scotland writes about the unique role that Turning Point Scotland has in the story of Housing First in Scotland and why the launch of the Housing First Academy is the right step at exactly the right time.

Homeless Network Scotland and Turning Point Scotland have a close and shared history responding to homelessness and all its related issues, and on Housing First in Scotland especially.

The late Ian Irvine is rightly credited with bringing the Housing First model to Scotland in 2010 while Operations Manager with Turning Point Scotland and long-standing trustee of Homeless Network Scotland. While a decade on, Turning Point Scotland’s Director of Operations, Patrick McKay, is serving a term as Chair of Homeless Network Scotland.

In 2016, both organisations founded Housing First Scotland alongside the Institute for Social Policy, Housing and Equalities Research at Heriot-Watt university. This team of leading academics were becoming increasingly convinced by the strength of evidence of Housing First approaches internationally and the better outcomes it could achieve in Scotland for people whose homelessness is made much harder by experiences such as trauma and addiction.

Together, we had a shared ambition to build from the Glasgow pilot and to help partners scale up the approach in their area. Housing First Scotland became a place to direct the energy and interest in Housing First among early adopters and champions emerging across all sectors. We were so inspired by the 250 delegates joining our 2017 and 2018 conferences in Stirling, before we spread out to enable 350 people to join our 2019 conference at Edinburgh’s International Conference Centre.

Of course, the landscape shifted significantly across that period thanks to the Scottish Parliament’s Local Government and Communities committee, whose year-long deliberations in 2017-18 concluded that Housing First had a key role to play in ensuring Scotland’s strong, rights-based approach to homelessness is better realised at local level. And the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government in 2017 which committed to resolving homelessness backed by a £50m fund; a cross-sector Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group was appointed with Housing First, as part of a broader rapid rehousing framework, our cornerstone recommendation. 

Meanwhile, Social Bite targeted their remarkable fundraising efforts to catalyse a Housing First Pathfinder in 6 areas, appointing Homeless Network Scotland and Corra Foundation as project and fund managers, Turning Point Scotland as training providers and Heriot-Watt university as evaluators. This set in motion £6.5m primary funding from the Scottish Government’s Ending Homelessness Together Fund to increase the reach and ambition of the pathfinder.

Scotland is now on a mission to ensure that all people with the hardest experiences of homelessness across all parts of Scotland get housing first and fast. The pandemic has only asserted the urgency to have Housing First not just at the heart, but at the helm of our recovery from it.

So it’s a pleasure this week to add our warmest congratulations to Turning Point Scotland on the launch of the Housing First Academy bolstered by an online resource to train and support best delivery of Housing First on the ground. This is exactly the right step at exactly the right time in Scotland’s story of Housing First. 

The Academy and resource hub for key workers is both a beacon and a lifeline, a new community of shared ambition and shared practice. And one that can draw on experiences from within and beyond Scotland to inspire current Housing First support workers – and embrace the many hundreds more that will step up to this important role in their area over the coming months and years.

First Route Map from Everyone Home Collective

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Night shelters and hotel rooms as a response to homelessness will be actively designed out over the next phase according to plans published today by the Everyone Home Collective. The plans will feed into Scottish and local Government thinking as the country moves out of lockdown and considers the future of night shelter and hotel accommodation along with other issues around homelessness policy.

The Route Map can be viewed here at the Everyone Home website along with further information about the work of the Collective and other plans over the coming weeks and months. Keep up to date with the latest thinking and publications using #EveryoneHome on social media.

Night shelters currently operate in Edinburgh, delivered by Bethany Christian Trust since 1996, and in Glasgow delivered by Glasgow City Mission since 2010.

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised both health and practical considerations for charities providing this type of accommodation. This is especially true for dormitory-style shelters.

Maggie Brunjes, Chief Executive of Homeless Network Scotland, said: “This has been a priority issue for the Collective so I want to thank everyone involved in pulling together this important Route Map, and the organisations running shelters for their leadership and expertise in reaching an agreement that will work.

“The Collective have agreed to modify provision later this year to take into account social distancing and ensure the safety of guests and staff, aiming to make sure shelter is provided for all those who need it. The Route Map sets out our objective to phase out this type of provision, and in the meantime have it act as a reception centre for Housing First and other rapid rehousing options.”

19 charities call for ‘triple-lock’ to end rough sleeping after COVID-19

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Nineteen influential charity sector organisations working to end homelessness presented a joint plan to the Scottish Government based around three key asks that experts and academics believe could permanently end rough sleeping and destitution in Scotland as the country emerges from the pandemic.

The Collective, named Everyone Home, includes many household names and respected organisations working to end homelessness in all parts of the country. Together, they have agreed a ‘triple-lock’ of measures to protect the progress that has been made and underpin next steps.

Patrick McKay, Chair of Homeless Network Scotland and Operations Director, Turning Point Scotland said: “The majority of people and organisations in Scotland that care about homelessness agree that the Scottish Government’s Ending Homelessness Together Plan is the right approach, and we were making progress. However, the onset of this pandemic demanded a rapid response to keep people safe. Since March we have managed to accommodate and support all those who wanted to be indoors, including people with no recourse to public funds such as people seeking asylum in Scotland. Throughout, local and national government, charities, health and housing associations have worked together.

“It is now imperative to secure that progress. The pandemic will have a disproportionate impact on people who experience all types of disadvantage, potentially driving up homelessness. By implementing the measures outlined in this plan, Scotland has a unique window to end rough sleeping and mitigate the impact of all forms of homelessness.”

To help set out a way forward in local and national efforts to tackle homelessness now and in the future the 19 organisations involved in the Collective have agreed priorities and set out a range of approaches summarised as:

 prioritise prevention, create as much housing capacity as we can now and make a long-term commitment to increase the supply of homes for social rent
 permanently prevent a return to previous levels of rough sleeping in all areas
 no evictions into homelessness, the end of avoidable evictions and the threat of illegal evictions.

The Collective will also present a framework for offering support and guidance to local authorities, private landlords, tenants, housing associations as well as a framework to support rapid scaling of Housing First across all areas in Scotland. This will provide learning, guidance and tools for quality assurance, support and cost implications. The 19 organisations that are members of the Collective will continue to develop and refine plans for ensuring an effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic as restrictions are lifted.

You can read our joint-plan and support our urgent efforts to get everyone home at www.everyonehome.scot

Join in on social media at #EveryoneHome

Staying In Fund

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The Staying in Fund is now closed to new applications.
If you have already made an application, we will confirm if a grant payment will be made to you (or the person you nominated) no later than Friday 29 May.

Housing First Annual Check-Up Published

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Homeless Network Scotland have published the first annual check-up report on Scotland’s Housing First Pathfinder. Martin Gavin, Head of External Relations, picks out the key points.

Reaching the first birthday of the Pathfinder designed to scale up Housing First across six local authority areas in five partnerships, is an important milestone. With 252 tenancies created the programme is being watched with interest from other parts of the British Isles, as well as Europe, the USA and Australia. Scotland is widely, and rightly, viewed as a leader in implementing Housing First.

In Finland, the Housing First model has contributed to the only downward homelessness rate in Europe, with little or no rough sleeping in their capital city. Juha Kaakinen, CEO of Finland’s Y-Foundation, would have been the keynote speaker at this year’s conference. Instead Juha will join us for a webinar today at 2pm, taking questions and talking about their experiences. Commenting on Scotland’s progress in our first annual Housing First Check Up report, published today, Juha says: “In this work we need beacons of hope like the Pathfinder. The work done in Scotland to upscale Housing First is an inspirational example for many countries.”

The moment that is captured in this quote is built on a solid foundation laid by those innovators who have been sizing up the potential of Housing First for more than a decade in Scotland and supporting tenants to build and live their lives in those intervening years. 

The knowledge that people were spending too much time in temporary accommodation has prompted a focus on rapid rehousing leading to all councils submitting Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans to the Scottish Government. With Housing First sitting as part of this wider approach the focus of the Pathfinder is to challenge and change our current processes in the short and long term, creating new approaches and gradually leaving behind the old; a process of transition that Pathfinders continue press ahead with during the current crisis.

Housing First is still working thanks to the incredible dedication and expertise of support providers up and down the country. And not only in the Pathfinder consortia, also in those council areas testing and operating their own local schemes.

The substantial international evidence behind Housing First points to a tenancy sustainment rate of 80-90%. Tenancy sustainment here has stayed above 90% for the full programme so far. Today’s Housing First Check Up Report also reveals that Edinburgh (98%) and Glasgow (92%) report the highest levels of local tenancy sustainment. A quarter of tenants have now been in their own home for more than a year (58) and 21 people have been at home for more than 18 months.

The time it takes to get someone into a home is also falling. Stirling (-64%) and Aberdeen/shire (-56%) saw the largest reductions of the Pathfinder areas, with Aberdeen/shire showing excellent progress in achieving the 28-day target, with 39% of people moving into their homes within one month. In Dundee we see a steady, sustained increase in new tenancies starting over the period of the report, along with a 41% fall in repeat homelessness.

The report also tells us where challenges exist. In the past year, four people have returned to homelessness, each person will have their own story and we want to understand them all. Sadly, eight tenants have died, with long-term prison sentences accounting for a further six ended tenancies. For the majority of our tenants, underlying health conditions and often a lifetime of multiple severe disadvantage means the odds are stacked against them. This makes the achievement of the 92% (as of March 2020) that remain in their own homes, supported by amazing staff, even more remarkable.

The Pathfinder is also helping us to better understand the impact that scaling up across Scotland will have on this success rate, with all 32 local authorities soon rolling out locally focused Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans. The approach must work for 500 as well as it does for 50.