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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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)
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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’
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.