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Tracking Homelessness: A Feasibility Study
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Scottish Executive established a Homelessness Task Force (HTF) in August 1999 to:
"…review the causes and nature of homelessness in Scotland; to examine current practice in dealing with cases of homelessness; and to make recommendations on how homelessness in Scotland can best be prevented and, where it does occur, tackled effectively".
1.2 The HTF included members from both the statutory and voluntary sectors, and was chaired by relevant Scottish Ministers. The HTF's first report made a series of recommendations for legislative change (Scottish Executive, 2000), which were incorporated into the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001. A key change introduced by this Act was the requirement for local authorities to produce homelessness strategies for their area. The HTF's final report was published in February 2002, and made a raft of wide-ranging recommendations on preventing, alleviating and resolving homelessness. It also included a set of proposals for more radical change to Scotland's homelessness legislation, and these recommendations have been incorporated into the Homelessness (Scotland) Bill currently before the Scottish Parliament.
1.3 The HTF final report further recommended the establishment of a Homelessness Monitoring Group (HMG) to assess progress in implementing the HTF's recommendations. It suggested a 'basket' of statistical indicators that the HMG should pay particular but not exclusive attention to assess progress in tackling homelessness in Scotland. The HMG has now been established and is considering how best to monitor the implementation of the HTF's recommendations and, more fundamentally, to evaluate the impact of the resultant policy and legal changes.
1.4 This report describes the work undertaken by the National Centre for Social Research, the University of Glasgow and the University of Essex to consider how, and in what ways, longitudinal research could assist the work of the HMG. Research conducted for the HTF (Anderson & Tulloch, 2000; Pawson et al., 2001; Rosengard et al., 2002) and the Scottish Executive (Hinds, Sproston and Taylor, 2001) had already highlighted the need for longitudinal research into homelessness in order to understand better the processes which lead people into and out of this situation, and to develop more robust evaluations of specific interventions and projects designed to tackle homelessness.
1.5 The original aims of the study were:
- to identify which groups of homeless people/families - including potentially, currently, and ex-homeless people - can feasibly be studied through longitudinal research;
- to assess specific methodological elements including recruitment and retention of participants;
- to address the ethical and data protection aspect of different methodologies;
- to investigate costs and relative risk of different methodologies;
- to consider how a longitudinal study of homeless people would need to be designed to contribute to evaluations of particular projects or initiatives intended to assist them;
- to carefully assess and compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of different methodologies including the nature, quality, relevance and application to policy of the data generated;
- to make recommendations on a preferred methodology;
- to provide a draft research specification with guideline costs for implementing the recommended methodology.
1.6 From the outset it was clear that we were not trying to design one all-purpose longitudinal study, but rather to look at a combination of approaches that might be undertaken to meet these aims.
1.7 The research for the study was mainly desk-based. A literature review of relevant papers on longitudinal research that had been undertaken in both the United Kingdom and the United States was produced (Chapter 3). As well as identifying what longitudinal research had been undertaken, it also highlighted what research methods had been used and with what degree of success. This review identified where there was a lack of longitudinal research in Scotland and informed a subsequent examination of the policy needs from a study on homelessness (Chapter 2).
1.8 In parallel to the literature review, information about the data on homelessness from administrative sources that are available in Scotland and the main surveys undertaken in Scotland was obtained from both published documents and telephone interviews. Interviews were also undertaken with local authority staff and with staff at a number of homelessness projects. These interviews were undertaken not just to collect relevant information on datasets that are currently held relating to homelessness clients of the local authorities/ projects, but also to assess the feasibility of accessing such data for research purposes.
1.9 Having obtained information about current data availability and policy requirements for new research, we then embarked on a process of exploring research designs that might meet these policy needs. Particular emphasis was given to the types of homelessness for which there is a current lack of information. Chapter 4 describes the various options that were considered as possible approaches to gathering longitudinal information and includes summary research designs for the more promising ideas. Chapter 5 gives detailed information on ways in which tracking of homeless people might be undertaken in any longitudinal research design and examines data protection and ethical issues that need to be considered.
1.10 At the final stage, recommendations (Chapter 6) were made as to the approaches that should be further pursued.
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