What Can The Department Of Social Services Do For Homeless People

Homeless people tend to have individualised, complex needs. Simply their first requirement is elementary—a home.

Access to social and wellness services plays a central role in guaranteeing quality of life. This is particularly relevant for the almost vulnerable in society, such as homeless people—for whom admission may be particularly difficult fifty-fifty when services are potentially available.

In October 2019 the European Commission and the Belgian government, with the support of the consultancy ICF, commissioned from the writer a thematic report to feed a peer review on social assistance to homeless people. This involved representatives and experts from Austria, Cyprus, the Czech republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italia and Romania, besides as from the European commission and NGOs.

Reasons varied

Among the many studies conducted over the years to analyse failure to accept up social help, just a few consider the situation of homeless people (here, here and here). The reasons for non-take-up are quite varied:

lack of data—homeless people do not take upward rights because they are unaware of them;
costly or complex access—application procedures are circuitous, homeless people oft lack the resource to navigate the bureaucracy and, even when they know about their rights, homeless people frequently practise non apply due to long waiting times or because 'what is on offer is not adjusted to people's needs';
social barriers—these include the fearfulness of being stigmatised, a subjective perception of lack of demand, pride or a lack of trust in institutions;
administrative barriers—the central impediment to admission hither being the lack of a stable accost;
benefit conditionality—people claiming benefits such as minimum income may exist required to undertake a piece of work activity as a condition for receiving the benefit, non always possible for the nigh vulnerable; and
limited availability of services in rural areas.

In many countries the route to obtaining social assistance and exerting fundamental social rights is registration in the population register. Having no postal address affects homeless people in a range of ways: it does not let them to receive social welfare payments, to gain admission to a general practitioner and medical care, nor to apply for work. It does not fifty-fifty permit them to vote or bring together a library.

To ensure that homeless people take up their rights several initiatives have been identified.

Granting a reference address, even if fictitious, seems to empower homeless people to 'accept matters into their own easily and exist more independent'. In several countries a reference accost is available merely obtaining information technology may entail a very long await and complex procedures.

A reference address tin be a mere authoritative concept simply, as in Belgium, information technology tin also exist envisaged as a form of social assist and as a gateway. Other support—housing, financial, psychological, medical and social—can and then be provided to reintegrate the homeless person into gild.

In Republic of ireland, the mail launched in Apr 2019 the Address Signal, a service based in mail service offices to allow homeless people to receive postal service relating to medical appointments and applications for schools or jobs. The Address Point has been developed with the support of several homeless charities—in October one tertiary of homeless people in the country had already signed up to it.

Homelessness can't exist solved with an address alone. Just this tin can help give individuals a part of their identity back.

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Outreach effective

Outreach to promote admission to social and health services, by qualified social workers with the involvement of NGOs, has proved particularly effective. Outreach teams are primarily designed to connect people living rough with existing services, across shelters.

The Dutch strategy to reduce non-accept-up is a skilful instance: in the Netherlands, the take-up rate is well-nigh to 100 per cent. A special unit of measurement was created to assistance homeless individuals secure admission to social benefits and manage their coin. Homeless individuals are given shelter before being redirected to a specific service in accord with their needs.

In French republic the government established a partnership with Les Restos du Coeur, a network of two,000 locations providing basic support each year to more i million people in need. This network volition be connected to the national social-protection network and will facilitate a first contact between people in demand and the government.

Lowering the access threshold is some other strategy to reduce rates of non-take-upward of social benefits past homeless people. It tin can exist accomplished by making the services more attainable through improved design or by removing administrative hurdles. Online admission to service provision, for example, is an inadequate entry point for homeless people. Several initiatives accept been identified to support them in gaining admission to the telematics welfare system.

Another strategy concerns the involvement of 'experts past experience'. In Finland and in Belgium former service users provide back up to the government in agreement the difficulties and obstacles to access, and are consulted about how services should be designed and run.

Collaboration between services and tailor-made aid through case management addresses a characteristic of homeless persons—the presence of dissimilar, often circuitous, needs which crave the involvement of a wide range of service providers to tackle. Tailored case-management is the success gene in service provision, being built around the individual user and integrating housing policies, social services and health (including drugs and mental health) services.

Housing first

The 'housing first' approach to avert rough sleeping is adopted by European union fellow member states which practise not count on temporary solutions but provide dissimilar policy answers—considering that, for homeless people, a home is the starting time pace towards social integration. This approach is evident across sixteen countries, including Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, holland and the UK.

The housing-first approach, rather than moving homeless people through stages towards stable housing, moves them direct from rough sleeping or shelter to a permanent and contained home with adequate support. Such interventions treat the right to housing for homeless people as the primary and essential element for regaining autonomy.

Republic of finland is the most advanced case. An integrated Finnish homelessness strategy was launched in 2008, its goal to halve long-term homelessness by 2011. While this was not accomplished, the strategy nevertheless proved quite constructive: despite the contemporaneous economic crisis, which saw long-term homelessness ascension considerably elsewhere in Europe, in Finland it fell by 28 per cent.

The succeeding phase of the strategy (2012-2015) proposed every bit a goal to eliminate long-term homelessness by 2015 through prevention, more than efficient use of social housing, strengthening of housing-advice services and the successful integration of the housing-start approach within a wider array of services. Finland has not accomplished the elimination of homelessness simply it has been reduced to the lowest levels in Europe, almost to Denmark and Norway. Between 2012 and 2016 total homelessness in Finland fell past a farther 16 per cent. What is peculiarly interesting is that this issue has been accomplished in a very short time.

In Belgium too, in recent years, the housing-first approach has been making an impact. An evidence-based evaluation demonstrated that it is the most effective response to chronic homelessness, with 93 per cent of individuals supported still in housing after three years.

Studies prove that strategies based on the presumption that the needs of homeless people tin exist met with standard services are proving ineffective. Successful policies are centred on individual needs and preferences. This seems to be the reason why 'housing first' is much more constructive at ending homelessness than other approaches adopted across Europe.

Neither the author'due south paper for the European Commission nor this article based on information technology should be taken every bit reflecting the official position of the commission.

Chiara Crepaldi

Chiara Crepaldi is head of the European Social Policies Research Unit at the Istituto per la Ricerca Sociale in Milano and a member of the lath of the Associazione per la Ricerca Sociale. She co-ordinates research, evaluation and monitoring of projects on social and health policies and services at national and European union level, concerning poverty and social exclusion of vulnerable target groups and social sustainability.