Too many conditions placed on help for homeless people with complex needs, major study finds
Street at night
A wide-ranging study undertaken by the University of Salford and Nottingham Trent University, has highlighted the causes and potential solutions to the social exclusion experienced by many multiply excluded homeless people.
A wide-ranging study undertaken by the University of Salford and Nottingham Trent University, has highlighted the causes and potential solutions to the social exclusion experienced by many multiply excluded homeless people.
The Economic and Social Research Council-funded study, which compared the priorities of 150 homeless people and support agencies in Nottingham and London, found that homelessness is caused by a number of commonly occurring circumstances, but that agencies often have their effectiveness reduced by a range of competing agendas and policies.
Upon seeking help, homeless people come into contact with support agencies which are constrained to varying degrees by other agendas. This is especially true of mainstream services which do not specialise in the needs of the user group and only help if key conditions are met – conditions often fixed by statutory priorities, centrally driven targets, or constraints on the use of resources.
These include homeless people falling outside the limitations imposed by accommodation providers around priority need, local connection, indebtedness, or criminal conviction.
Some homeless people are also unable to meet the conditions set by drug and alcohol rehabilitation hostels, and others are deterred from using services for fear of intimidation by peers, exposure to temptation, or excessive regulation. Meanwhile, failed asylum seekers and EU migrants cannot be helped by accommodation providers because their immigration status denies them recourse to public funds.
The agencies that are most successful in helping homeless people with complex needs are those able to offer flexible personalised encouragement and support at the service user’s own pace.
Professor Peter Dwyer from the University of Salford noted: “Across a range of organisations the majority of the support workers are extremely dedicated, but the most successful are able to spend a lot of individual time and work flexibly with their clients to tackle the formidable barriers that homeless people face in overcoming their social exclusion.”
The study was also able to characterise the major causes of homelessness. These include relationship breakdown with other householders, eviction for not fulfilling the demands of a landlord or hostel manager, or termination of an institutional duty of care such as a local authority, prison or hospital.
Dr Graham Bowpitt from Nottingham Trent University commented: “These circumstances are usually generated by typical background factors, particularly domestic violence or abuse, bereavement, alcohol or drug dependency, mental health problems, criminality, limited social networks, poverty and unemployment. Each of these issues makes homelessness more likely and effective responses to the problem far more difficult.”
Agencies that routinely interact with homeless people identified a range of priorities and approaches in their work and the study reveals the ways in which existing policy and practice may restrict agencies’ ability to meet homeless people’s complex needs.
The full report is available on request. Please contact the press office.
