Ending homelessness? Fund domestic abuse services

    In May, the Government announced proposals for a new legal duty to help secure the future of domestic abuse refuges. With partners from across the housing, homelessness and women’s sectors, St Mungo’s is calling for support for survivors facing homelessness.

    Photo fo Cat Glew, Women's Strategy Manager for St Mungo'sSt Mungo’s helps thousands of women and men find a home away from the dangers of the street. But home isn’t always a safe place.

    Many St Mungo’s clients are survivors of domestic abuse. St Mungo’s data from 2016 shows that at least 54% of our female residents with a history of rough sleeping had experienced violence or abuse from a partner or family member. A 2015 study found that as many as 92% of homeless women had experienced violence or abuse during their lifetime.

    Creating safety for people facing harm from those they love and trust is a serious challenge. St Mungo’s works with specialist domestic abuse organisations who support our clients, so we welcome proposals to try to provide a more certain future for domestic abuse services.

    Working with housing, domestic abuse and homelessness partners, we have responded to the Government’s consultation on future support for survivors of domestic abuse.

    We need a strong, specialist domestic abuse sector who can work with survivors facing homelessness. Only then can Government hope to achieve its aims to end rough sleeping and support all survivors of domestic abuse.

    But why would improving domestic abuse support help end homelessness?

    1. Domestic abuse puts survivors at risk of homelessness – and vice versa

    A third of female St Mungo’s clients say that domestic abuse contributed to their homelessness. Escaping domestic abuse can force survivors to make an impossible choice – live with abuse, or face homelessness.

    Trying to keep safe while homeless can also be risky. A study by the University of York for St Mungo’s found that women are often hidden homeless: staying with friends, family, or strangers who expect sex in return for shelter.

    Women who do sleep rough can form intimate relationships on the street in order to survive – but relying on a partner for protection can expose survivors to escalating abuse and control.

    2. Lack of funding and support is forcing survivors to sleep rough

    Funding for refuges and other life-saving domestic abuse services has suffered severe cuts. English local authorities cut spending on refuges by nearly a quarter between 2010 and 2017.

    In 2016-17, Women’s Aid found that 60% of referrals to refuges could not be accepted. One in 10 women supported by their No Woman Turned Away project were forced to sleep rough whilst waiting for a refuge space.

    3. Support for survivors facing multiple disadvantage is in short supply

    Survivors with mental health, drug or alcohol problems are less likely to be able to access specialist domestic abuse services, who are rarely resourced to support them safely.

    Women’s Aid research found that 31% of women with mental health problems and 65% of women with substance use problems were refused an available refuge space because of their needs.

    SafeLives found that survivors facing multiple disadvantage may be unable to work with local domestic abuse services if they do not have a phone or cannot attend regular appointments.

    Survivors with no access to public funds because of their immigration status are excluded from most domestic abuse accommodation because they are not eligible for housing benefit to cover the rent.

    4. Survivors without a safe home are left in danger

    Under the current legislation, survivors of domestic abuse approaching their local council for help are not automatically considered to be in priority need for housing. Instead, people are required to prove they are additionally vulnerable in order to be owed the ‘main homelessness duty’ – and access to settled accommodation.

    Evidence shows that survivors found not to be owed the duty are more likely to return to a dangerous situation. Some end up rough sleeping, sofa-surfing or living in unsuitable temporary accommodation where they are at further risk of abuse and are removed from services that could support them.

    Calling for change

    The Government has proposed a new duty on local authorities to assess local need and commission domestic abuse accommodation.

    It’s a good start, but Government must also confirm ring fenced funding to support those services. The proposed definition must be made clearer to make sure that specialist refuges are rebuilt and protected.

    Every survivor deserves support, and we think Government should also provide separate future funding for specialist domestic abuse outreach services to work with survivors facing homelessness.

    A new programme of investment in homelessness services is also badly needed. As part of this, we need women-only homelessness accommodation in every part of the country as a safe route away from the streets.

    And of course, automatic priority need should be extended to all survivors, so that anyone fleeing domestic abuse in England is guaranteed a safe home.

    Should we talk about death?

    Palliative Care

    Our Palliative Care Coordinator Andy Knee poses this important question and highlights the innovative ways our Palliative Care Service is supporting clients who are at risk of death or in need of bereavement support.

    Should we talk about death? In St Mungo’s Palliative Care team, we think the simple answer to this question is yes.

    Death is something that affects us all, that does not discriminate against gender, race, sexuality, culture, or religion. Many of us are fortunate to talk about death and our wishes with loved ones. But what if you don’t have a home? And what if you don’t have family or loved ones to have these conversations with?

    This is a sad reality for lots of people who experience homelessness. A reality where many of their deaths will be preventable, undignified and untimely, with no planning for their wishes, and sadly many will be forgotten.

    In 2017 there were an estimated 597 deaths of homeless people in England and Wales, which represents a 24% increase since 2013. The NHS has recently reported a rise in homeless patients returning to the streets with many observing a surge in serious illnesses in the past decade such as respiratory conditions, liver disease, and cancer. Without someone to be their voice and their advocate, many individuals will be trapped in a harmful cycle of being admitted to hospital and discharged to the streets. This is something we can change.

    Dying Matters Week 2019

    ‘Are we ready?’ is the poignant theme of this year’s Dying Matters Week, which helps to raise awareness around this issue. At the end of 2018 we responded to the increase in homeless deaths and continue to pave the way in making change for people experiencing homelessness. We know the importance of providing end of life care and support to our clients, and we are using creative and innovative new ways to provide this service.

    Our Palliative Care Service

    To mark Dying Matters Week, we’re shining a light on our Palliative Care Service. This service is the only one of its kind in the homelessness sector and has benefited from dedicated funders over the last five years.

    The purpose of the Palliative Care Service is to coordinate a flexible and responsive care pathway to support clients who have a terminal prognosis or acute and potentially fatal health conditions, and to provide them with options that protect their quality of life. The service works to ensure that our clients can access healthcare and that we provide appropriate support to help them approach the end of their life with dignity and respect.

    We meet with local health services, lead change with research, and continue to develop tools and support structures for St Mungo’s. We’re also here to support staff across St Mungo’s to feel empowered and discuss death as openly as possible.

    Our aim is to ensure that everyone experiences a ‘good death’. We are also working to destigmatise this term, which holds so much power and importance.

    New Befriending Service

    This year the service has expanded to include our Palliative Care Volunteer Coordinator, and in June 2019, St Mungo’s will launch a new Befriending Service.

    The Befriending Service will serve to support clients that are at risk of death, or clients who need bereavement support for a recent or historical loss. In addition, the Befriending Service will support colleagues and teams around loss and bereavement, reinforcing our message: “you are not alone”.

    In response to the theme of Dying Matters Week – “Are we ready?” – St Mungo’s can proudly say “We are, and will continue to be.”

    Find our more about our Palliative Care Service.

    Saving hostels, rebuilding lives

    Rob, St Mungo's client

    Dominic Williamson, Executive Director of Strategy and Policy, explains why we’re launching our Save Hostels Rebuild Lives campaign…

    In August 2016, our CEO Howard Sinclair wrote in The Guardian about how government proposals on future funding were creating great uncertainty for organisations like St Mungo’s that provide supported housing for homeless people.

    Nearly a year on, that uncertainty remains and the future funding for these vital services is still up in the air.

    So this week St Mungo’s is launching a new campaign – Save Hostels Rebuild Lives – to draw attention to the issue. Our call to government is: “Stop and take the time to get this right”.

    At one level the issue is simple: every year supported housing, like hostels, helps thousands of homeless people escape the streets and rebuild their lives. Other supported housing prevents homelessness, for example, for young people at risk. These services will be essential to achieving the government’s own goal of reducing rough sleeping – and so they must be protected from further funding cuts.
    However, because the way the costs of these services is funded is quite complex, getting wider interest in and support for the issue is not easy.

    I’ll try to explain. Bear with me – this may get a bit technical!

    Supported housing for homeless people includes short term hostels, assessment centres as well as longer term housing with support. They are a subset of a much larger supported housing sector which includes domestic violence refuges, sheltered housing and extra care housing for elderly people. Some services have 24 hour staffing, others have 9-to-5 support depending on the client group.

    The cost of the staff providing the support are met through contracts commissioned by local authorities, through what used to be known as the Supporting People scheme. The housing costs are covered by the rent, which for most people is met through their individual entitlement to housing benefit. This includes housing management staff costs and the cost of the physical building itself including facilities such as lifts or fire alarms systems, day-to-day repairs and the long-term maintenance of the fabric of the building.

    Over the past six or seven years, as local council budgets have been squeezed, so has the money available for the support contracts. As a result, some homelessness services have shut or had the level of support reduced.

    ‘Not possible to deliver supported housing within LHA cap’

    Last year the government announced changes that would potentially be even more devastating. Driven by the roll out of Universal Credit and pressure to reduce welfare spending, DWP ministers set out plans to cap people’s housing benefit entitlement at the local housing allowance rate (LHA). This is rate varies considerably across the country and is tagged to the lower end of the local private rented sector market.

    In many parts of the country it is simply not possible to deliver supported housing within the LHA cap. Particularly in the current funding climate, where local authorities are already strapped for cash, the government’s proposal to make up any shortfall through a discretionary local top-up fund will undoubtedly lead to a further cuts in funding – and ultimately put crucial services at risk of closure.

    Over the past 12 months, St Mungo’s and other organisations such as the National Housing Federation have been working to model the potential impact of these changes on services. We have responded to a government consultation and submitted evidence to a joint enquiry by the DWP and CLG select committees. Their report agreed that that the government must take more time to develop a sustainable and secure future funding system that protects these housing and support services.

    Before the General Election ministers had been listening to the arguments and promised to protect services. Meetings have started with new ministers to make sure they also understand the risks. We are pleased to be part of those discussion and at a meeting recently our CEO Howard invited Caroline Dinenage MP, the DWP minister now in charge of the reforms, to come and visit one of our hostels to learn more.

    ‘Helping people off the streets for nearly five decades’

    St Mungo’s has been helping homeless people off the streets for nearly five decades. Over that time have seen that unless the funding regime is strong and secure, services for homeless people are often among the first to be cut when budgets are tight. Cuts to supported housing have undoubtedly contributed to the rapid rise in rough sleeping since 2010.

    This really is a matter of life and death. Sleeping rough is dangerous – the average age of death of someone sleeping rough is 47.

    Each night at St Mungo’s we provide housing and support to 2,700 people. We work to build on people’s strengths so they can recover from the issues that have led to their homelessness. A decent and safe place live and good quality support are crucial.

    There are many fantastic supported housing services across the country which seek to empower people and have been very successful in getting people back on their feet. But there is also some poor quality provision, and hostels may not the best route for everyone.

    ‘Helping people with complex needs to secure a tenancy’

    Over the past few years there has been growing interest in an approach called ‘Housing First’. Originating in New York as an alternative to the patchy emergency shelter provision that is the norm in the USA, the Housing First approach is based on helping people with complex needs to secure a tenancy first along with a long term and flexible package of support around them. There is a growing evidence base from Europe and the UK that this approach can be effective and the government has responded positively to calls to scale this up as part of the solution to growing rough sleeping.

    St Mungo’s is one of the main providers of Housing First projects in England. We are seeing how this model can work well for some people and we support the government’s intention to further pilot Housing First on a larger scale as part of the pathway to help people off the streets. However, supported housing will remain as the backbone of homelessness provision and over the past decades has helped thousands to move to a life off the streets.

    ‘Dedicated to continously improving our services’

    At St Mungo’s we are dedicated to consciously improving our services and excited about the prospect of having a wider evidence-based debate about what service models work best for different people.
    But while we gather and analyse our evidence, we need to protect existing, tried and tested services that are currently supporting thousands of vulnerable men and women up and down the country away from rough sleeping.

    We are facing a number of significant challenges. The roll out of Universal Credit and the related phasing out of housing benefit means that the funding system for supported housing will need to change. Restrictions on benefits for 18-21 year olds means that our accommodation for young people could become silted up.

    Finding a sustainable funding solution will require time and careful consideration of the full range of options. The government should – and can – take that time because housing benefit is not due to be fully phased out until 2022.

    That is why we need your help now. I hope you will join us by signing and sharing our petition using the hashtag #Savehostels.

    Save Hostels. Rebuild Lives.

    Rob, St Mungo's client

    This week, St Mungo’s launched our Save Hostels Rebuild Lives campaign, calling on the government to properly consider the damaging effect changes to funding for supported housing could have on homeless people. Take five minutes to find out why, and what you can do to help.

    Many people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness need specialist support.

    This expert support is provided by dedicated staff in supported housing – hostels – but these services are at risk.

    The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Sajid Javid, and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Damian Green, are planning to present proposals to change funding for supported housing to government in a matter of months.

    St Mungo’s believes these changes will cause irreparable damage to essential services and may even cause some to close.

    A route out of rough sleeping

    Full disclosure? We provide supported housing services that could be affected by current proposals, which will compound problems faced by projects already being challenged by a reduction in rent allowance that came into effect in April 2017.

    In 2016, St Mungo’s housed 4,120 people, over half of whom have slept rough. Many of our clients have multiple and complex needs, and for them, recovery is more than a roof.

    Most funding for supported housing services for single homeless people comes from a combination of housing benefit and local authority budget for support they commission.

    Supported housing under threat

    The proposals involve reducing people’s benefit entitlement, but they don’t take into account the way support is funded. They will leave supported housing services even more reliant on entirely discretionary funding from already stretched local council budgets.

    With no legal requirement to provide vulnerable homeless people with supported housing, many services have lost their funding. Analysis by the National Audit Office shows that between 2010/11 and 2014/15 funding for housing-related support fell by 45% across single-tier and county councils. [1]

    There are many reasons to be concerned by this. One argument is that without the right support at the right time, people can get stuck in damaging cycles of homelessness, making recovery all the more difficult. Another is that causing the reduction of available places in supported housing makes no economic sense.

    The existing proposals suggest a cap on housing benefits based on local housing allowance rates, which is tied to rent levels in the private sector. This does not take into account the reality that the costs of providing supported housing are similar across the country.

    St Mungo’s believes that basing the system purely on Local Housing Allowance rates will provide little incentive to develop supported housing for homeless people in low rent areas. This would create a situation whereby availability of supported housing could be limited in places where it would be easier for residents to find affordable housing when they are ready to move on.

    A funding system that does not take into account local demand – or does not ensure that need is properly assessed – not only ruins lives, it is more expensive. Research published by the National Housing Federation found a shortfall of 16,692 places in supported housing for working-aged people in 2015/16. The research estimated that in the last financial year, the shortfall in supported housing places cost the taxpayer £361 million. [2]

    The right support for recovery

    “Making the service fit the need is really important.” – Rob

    Rob told me how he spent 20 years bouncing between sofas and services ill-equipped to help him recover and properly manage his mental health. Finally, he came to a service we run that worked for him. He’s since moved into independent living, is engaged to be married and is working as an advocate for homeless people.

    We know that sometimes people find certain environments challenging. Sometimes, people move between services because their support needs have changed or because services close.

    Recovery is a process, and moving into supported accommodation after living on the streets can be a difficult transition, but these services save lives.

    We are urging the Secretaries of State for Communities and Local Government and for Work and Pensions to:

    • Develop a sustainable and secure new funding system that helps vulnerable people get off the streets for good
    • Introduce a legal requirement for local authorities to assess need and plan for appropriate supported housing provision in their area
    • Ensure that the system is fully transparent and accountable to central government

    With the right support at the right time, people can recover and rebuild their lives after being homeless.

    Sign our petition to #SaveHostels here

    [1] National Audit Office (2014) The impact of funding reductions on local authorities

    [2] National Housing Federation (2017) Strengthening the case for supported housing

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