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FINAL EVALUATION OF THE ROUGH SLEEPERS
INITIATIVE
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1 The RSI was launched in 1997 in
response to evidence of increasing levels of rough sleeping
across the country. The programme was initially aimed at
reducing levels of rough sleeping, following the broad
model established by the RSI programme in England in 1990.
In 1999, the programme was given a new target to end the
need to sleep rough in Scotland by 2003.
2 An evaluation of the Rough Sleepers
Initiative (RSI) programme was undertaken by the Centre for
Housing Policy, at the University of York, during the
Autumn of 2004 and the Spring of 2005. The evaluation
involved a critical review and analysis of existing
research and statistical evidence, interviews with local
authority officers responsible for RSI, national level
interviews with individuals responsible for the development
and delivery of RSI and interviews with a sample of service
providers as well as former, current and potential rough
sleepers.
3 The evaluation found statistical and
qualitative evidence that the RSI programme had
successfully produced tangible reductions in the need to
sleep rough across the country.
4 The monitoring of the need to sleep
rough by George Street Research is a broadly reliable
indicator of RSI success. This monitoring indicated a
decline of the number of people sleeping rough presenting
to services of more than one third between 2001 and
2003.
5 The data collected by Glasgow Homeless
Network from RSI funded projects provide a very detailed
demographic picture of rough sleepers across the country.
The Glasgow Homelessness Network monitoring also suggests
that new rough sleepers continue to present themselves to
services in relatively small numbers. At present, the
database does not have sufficient coverage of the outcome
of service engagement with former, current and potential
rough sleepers.
6 HL1 data, collected by local
authorities on households presenting as homeless provide a
comprehensive picture of the extent of recent rough
sleeping among homeless households. Again, these data
illustrate that households with experience of sleeping
rough, while in a minority, continue to present as
homeless.
7 Local authority respondents reported
that RSI had enabled the development of a suite of services
within the major cities that were able to provide an
enhanced range of support to people sleeping rough. In
rural areas and smaller urban authorities, local authority
respondents reported that RSI had quite often created
specific services for the first time.
8 Local authority respondents also
reported that RSI had produced important local cultural and
political changes in placing rough sleepers and their needs
firmly within the policy agenda. RSI was seen by many local
authority respondents as the catalyst for more recent
policy developments including health and homelessness
action plans, homelessness strategies and the integration
of homelessness services within Supporting People planning.
It was the cumulative effect of these changes that was
often seen as most significant in reducing levels of rough
sleeping in their localities.
9 RSI had been mainstreamed into the
homelessness strategies of most local authorities. In some
cases, such as Edinburgh, there was full integration of RSI
budgets with Supporting People homelessness budgets and
other funding streams, at both strategic and service
delivery level. The same pattern existed within most
smaller urban authorities and rural authorities. Although a
few authorities were less far down this path, all were
heading in the same direction.
10 At service delivery level, most RSI
funded services were also in receipt of Supporting People
funds, often at greater levels than the RSI funds they had
access to.
11 Service providers generally shared
the positive views of local authority respondents about
RSI. They saw it as facilitating the development of
effective service responses for people sleeping rough and
as acting as something of a catalyst in encouraging wider
joint working and strategic planning across homelessness
services as a whole.
12 Service providers and local authority
respondents saw some limitations in the effectiveness of
RSI. Some groups of former, current and potential rough
sleepers were difficult to reach, such as a small number of
people with multiple needs and challenging behaviour. Poor
access to certain care and support services, such as drug
rehabilitation, was also seen as diminishing service
effectiveness. Most respondents talked about the effects of
shortages of suitable and affordable housing in which to
re-house former, potential and current rough sleepers in
the areas in which they worked.
13 Service users were generally positive
about the RSI funded services. Some reported the same
difficulties in accessing suitable housing and certain
services, particularly drug rehabilitation, as were
reported by local authority respondents and service
providers.
14 The RSI has been a successful
programme that has largely fulfilled its objective to end
the need to sleep rough in Scotland. The introduction of a
flexible funding programme allowed the development of new
services in areas that had previously lacked any specific
provision and also enabled the further development of the
sector in those areas that had some service provision. RSI
was widely seen as having culminated in the adoption of
local authority homelessness strategies which are
coordinated with both health and homelessness action plans
and Supporting People plans. Consequently, services for
people sleeping rough are increasingly integral to
strategic responses to homelessness. Positive changes in
cultural and political attitudes, which raised awareness of
the multiple needs among people sleeping rough and placed
their needs on local and national agendas were strongly
associated with the introduction of RSI. There is
statistical and qualitative evidence that significant,
tangible reductions in the levels of rough sleeping have
occurred since the programme began.
15 There are limits to the effectiveness
of RSI. Some groups of former, current and potential rough
sleepers are difficult for services to engage with, as much
because of their situation and characteristics as because
of the finite resources available to those services. In
terms of service delivery, beyond the existing provision of
services that specifically target the most marginalised and
challenging people sleeping rough, it is difficult to see
what else might be done. After a certain point, ever
increasing levels of expenditure on what is quite a small
group of people with high needs, would start to become hard
to justify.
16 There are other changes outside
direct service delivery that can potentially benefit people
sleeping rough. The increased coordination and
comprehensiveness of responses to all forms of homelessness
has been of general benefit to rough sleepers and it can be
anticipated that the ongoing legislative changes will ease
their access to accommodation in some respects. At the same
time, however, a lack of suitable and affordable
accommodation supply is evident across the country and this
will continue to limit the effectiveness of responses to
homelessness at strategic and service delivery level. There
are also issues in respect of access to certain kinds of
health and social work services, with the adequacy and
accessibility of drug detoxification services for people
sleeping rough, being highlighted in the fieldwork for this
evaluation.
Recommendations
The future of the programme
1 There are good strategic and logistical arguments for
integrating RSI planning, commissioning and service
delivery within local authority homelessness strategies and
associated Supporting People planning. The process of
mainstreaming RSI services at strategic and service
delivery level is effectively complete in several areas and
should be encouraged where it is not yet completed.
2 Specific targets to ensure services are geared towards
the needs of people sleeping rough should be integrated
into local authority homelessness strategies and externally
monitored, to ensure that the focus brought to rough
sleeping by RSI is not lost.
3 If integration of RSI funding with other funding
streams were to occur, it would be of central importance to
retain the flexibility that has characterised the
programme. For example, if RSI funding became integrated
into Supporting People, the usual rules with respect to
tying funding of services to accommodation would need to be
suspended for services for people sleeping rough. Specific
modifications to the criteria for funding services for
particular client groups are commonplace within the
Supporting People programme.
4 There is evidence of a continuing need for rough
sleeper services. Any significant reductions in expenditure
on homelessness and rough sleeper services are likely to
produce corresponding rises in rough sleeping.
5 Further consideration should be given to investigating
the effectiveness of preventative services, in the light of
evidence of ongoing need.
6 The provision of highly supportive long-term housing
settings should be investigated as a possible option for
meeting the needs of people sleeping rough with multiple
needs and challenging behaviour.
7 Specific initiatives such as RSI are affected by the
context set by wider housing and social policy across the
country. Issues such as the availability of suitable and
affordable housing across different areas will have an
impact on the effectiveness of homelessness strategies in
relation to rough sleeping. Wider policy debates should
take account of homelessness and rough sleeping where
applicable.
The monitoring of rough sleeping and rough
sleeper services
8 There is a strong case for maintaining a specific
national target on rough sleeping to retain appropriate
attention on this easily marginalised group. However, when
the 2003 legislation is fully implemented, it may be
sensible to revise the 'no-one need sleep rough' target to
reflect a changed context whereby there will be a duty on
local authorities to supply accommodation to all homeless
groups. If this revised target relates to reducing the
overall numbers of people sleeping rough, it may be
possible to assess this with the suggested modified version
of the GHN database.
9 The need to continue the monitoring of rough sleeper
services is clear, in order to assess effectiveness and to
provide data for local and national policy planning and
strategy. The existence of the national dataset on rough
sleeping provided by GHN gives Scotland a much clearer
picture of progress in tackling rough sleeping than is
available in England.
10 There is a need to address issues in respect of the
data entry systems within the GHN monitoring database, as
quality control needs some further development.
11 The GHN monitoring lacks sufficient outcome measures,
it collects insufficient information from an insufficient
number of organisations. Both the range of data collection
and the response rate need to be improved.
12 Although there are problems with the GHN monitoring,
this dataset provides a wealth of data within a very small
operating budget. There are good arguments for retaining
the role of GHN in managing a revised database system,
despite some operational problems, because of the degree of
success that has been achieved.
13 To maintain a separate 'RSI' database for the
foreseeable future is illogical in the context of the
mainstreaming of RSI funded services within local and
national strategic responses to homelessness. Such a
database would represent a increasingly arbitrary set of
homelessness projects. Consequently, if the GHN database is
to be maintained, it would be logical to roll it out across
homelessness services throughout the country.
14 The database developed by Edinburgh City Council,
which is outcome led and covers all homelessness services
in the city, should be examined in detail and any valuable
lessons transferred to a revised GHN database. The
capital's database system provides both the outcome
measures and the universal coverage of homelessness
services that would make a national database of great
utility for policy planning at local, regional and national
level.
15 Monitoring should enable the logging of whether
people sleeping rough are within couples or other forms of
household and whether this has acted as an obstacle to
services and also take account of whether pets have acted
as an obstacle to services.
16 Consideration should be given to one extension to
HL1, which would be asking a question about lifetime or
sustained experience of rough sleeping. This would provide
a greater depth of information and allow analysis of the
extent to which local authorities might be housing people
with sustained experience of sleeping rough. Again, this
modification would be of particular interest following the
implementation of the 2003 Act.
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