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Tracking Homelessness: A Feasibility Study
ANNEX 6: DESIGN FOR THE EVALUATION OF THE GLASGOW HOSTEL CLOSURE PROGRAMME
A6.1 The assessments being carried out will provide a detailed profile of some of the population of homeless people living in hostels in Glasgow. A review of the assessment interviews should be undertaken to ensure that they contain all information that would be required for a longitudinal study, in order to assess long-term outcomes.
A6.2 Developing a research design is difficult without information on the process of hostel closure and a timetable for this. Ideally everyone would need to be assessed at the same time and in the same way. In reality there are two assessment strands - the one for existing hostel residents and the one for people newly presenting as homeless. The latter of these represents a little over 1,000 cases a month - although some of the same people will reappear in later months (at least under the old system). The timetable for assessment of those in hostels is likely to be related to the availability of new accommodation, and it might therefore take a while for everyone to receive an assessment. It might also be that the process focuses on certain types of groups within the homeless population at different stages. Thus researchers need to obtain as much information on the process of hostel closure as possible and recognise that it might be necessary to sample on an on-going basis, unless a timetable for assessments is drawn up which researchers can access.
A6.3 For the evaluation, a sample of at least 1,000 people from the existing hostel population should be tracked for an initial three-year period, with contact attempted every six months. At each point of contact the type of interviews undertaken could vary. For example, it might be that once a year it would be useful to have a longer interview and in between times a very short interview. Qualitative interviews might be undertaken with a small sub-sample.
A6.4 In order to undertake research among this group, it will be important for the Scottish Executive to discuss monitoring and evaluation issues with the Glasgow Assessment teams before the pilot and evaluation is complete. Without this input, a system might be set up which would preclude research because the necessary consent was not obtained. It is likely that the teams and other staff within the reprovisioning programme will be seeking to undertake monitoring and evaluation work and these ideas might be offered to them as something they can usefully draw upon and perhaps implement.
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