Implementing policy and practice: How the local authority makes use of

It is important to understand how services in receipt of government funding are monitored as this was a key theme raised by respondents working in local government.

Supporting People (SP) is a central government programme for funding housing related support services. Initially launched on the 1^st April 2003, SP provides ‘strategically planned housing-related services’ to vulnerable people with the goal of ‘improving their quality of life by providing a stable environment to enable independent living’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008: 7). The programme is managed and delivered at the local level and decisions about which services to procure are made by the local authority. Fitzpatrick, Harding, Irving, Pawson and Sosenko (2011: 17), in their evaluation of homelessness prevention in Newcastle, claim that ‘SP funding is critical to homelessness alleviation and prevention. … with the commissioning process and enforcement of contract compliance playing a major role in the changes to homelessness services in the city’. The commissioning of services has undoubtedly played a key role in shaping the landscape of homeless provision given that it allows the local authority the freedom and flexibility to

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purchase services that are strategically and regionally relevant⁹. Newcastle City Council’s 2008/9-2012/13 Supporting People strategy identifies the following priorities relating to homeless people and provision:

Establish accommodation standards for supported housing; improved management information to inform commissioning; improve move on from approved premises through the pathways process; and services able to respond to homeless people facing chronic exclusion. (Newcastle City Council, 2008: 23)

Under SP, the local authority has priority over bed spaces for the first hour of each working day. This means that accommodation providers in receipt of SP funding have a duty to inform the local authority’s Housing Advice Centre (HAC) of any immediate or forthcoming vacancies in a project, and interview homeless women registered with and sent by the housing advice centre when a vacancy arises. This is a contractual obligation between this particular local authority and local service providers rather than a statutory obligation.

Ensuring service providers in receipt of SP funding meet their contractual obligations is a crucial and ongoing part of the local authority’s role. As such, the Supporting People programme includes a specific mechanism for monitoring the progress and performance of individual services. This takes the form of the quality assessment framework (QAF). This framework includes seven compulsory performance indicators - consisting of three national Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and four Service Performance Indicators (SPIs). KPIs provide information on the number of individuals that have been supported by a service, supported to move on to greater independence, and supported to maintain independence.

SPIs are used to monitor services and centre on contractual obligations such as service availability, staffing and length of stay. The performance of service providers is reviewed on a quarterly basis and data is fed back through performance indicators. For example, accommodation providers that have a high number of evictions over a certain time period are investigated whereby individual cases are reviewed to determine what happened, why it happened and whether it could have been prevented. Where the local authority is satisfied that a particular service has failed to deliver according to the terms of its contract,

9In determining which services to commission, the local authority can refer to the ‘Strategic Review Guidance’ (SITRA, 2012: 3-4). The guidance sets out how administering authorities should assess whether a service is ‘strategically relevant’ and whether it meets a ‘demand’ (ibid).

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the commissioning team is informed and they then determine if the incident is a one-off and what can be done to ensure the service provides what it should be providing.

In 2009 - the year of the fieldwork - the total expenditure on Supporting People (SP) services in Newcastle was £17,616,674. Of this, £812,847 was spent on ‘core’ housing and homeless information and advice services delivered by the Council’s Housing Advice Centre. In addition, SP funding of £9,424,078 was used to commission a range of accommodation based and floating support services from organisations to alleviate or prevent homelessness. These housing related support services included support for people with a variety of needs, including, but not limited to, single homeless people, homeless families with support needs, people with an offending history, people with drug and/or alcohol problems, young people, teenage parents, people with mental health problems, women escaping domestic violence and abuse, and refugees. £1,795,281 of SP funding was spent on homeless services specifically for young people and £1,563,742 was spent on accommodation and support services specifically for people with mental health problems.

In the financial year 2009/10, £2,016,295 of SP money was allocated to Your Homes Newcastle (YHN) homelessness services. This was used to fund homelessness services for single homeless people, young people, refugees and people with mental health problems (Freedom of Information Request 4139).

In April 2011, funding for Supporting People services was rolled into the Revenue Support Grant. There is no identifiable allocation within the Revenue Support Grant for Supporting People services. That said, in 2014/15, Newcastle City Council spent £9,650,226 on services previously funded via Supporting People. In addition, £6,493,960 was spent on commissioning a range of services from organisations to deliver accommodation and floating support to single homeless people, homeless families with support needs, people with an offending history, people with drug and/or alcohol problems, young people, teenage parents, people with mental health problems, women escaping domestic violence and abuse, and refugees. A further £1,294,124 was spent on homeless services specifically for young people aged 16-24 and £718,272 on homeless services specifically for people with mental health problems. Newcastle City Council commissioned YHN to deliver homelessness services for single homeless people, young people, refugees and people with mental health problems. The cost of these commissioned services in 2014/15 was

£1,270,330 (Freedom of Information Request, 8827).

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Whilst the Supporting People programme provided services which enabled individuals with a range of housing support needs to live independently, and hence to participate more fully in the life of the community, it was also a source of contention as practitioners talked about the importance of setting targets so as to avoid creating a dependency culture:

Supporting People expect that within a two-year period women are moved on through the system into independence. That’s probably wishful thinking cause for some people that’s never gonna work but it’s got to have some sort of target because otherwise yer creating dependence and people will be in hostels for years and that’s not really a very good use of a resource and it’s not a very good use of money. (Practitioner with Statutory Responsibility for Rough Sleeping)

As well as commissioning services, the local authority conducts assessments to establish eligibility under the homeless legislation. It is through homeless applications that the local authority monitors the profile of service users. Here the local authority’s Housing Advice Centre (HAC) is a key point of contact for people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness. Homeless prevention officers investigate each application to determine if the applicant is eligible for rehousing under Part VII of the Housing Act 1996. If the applicant is literally homeless or it is unreasonable for them to continue to occupy their current home because of violence or another reason, belongs to a priority need group, is unintentionally homeless, has a local connection and is eligible - the local authority has a duty to provide accommodation (The National Archives, 2002). If the applicant does not satisfy the criteria, the local authority only has a duty to offer advice and assistance. A homeless prevention officer outlined the different stages of the assessment process:

We provide a service where we would also need to provide emergency accommodation if someone presented and they were literally homeless and they fell into the priority need group - while we investigated the homeless case. I see everybody who comes through the door, it’s an initial assessment which takes five, ten minutes, take some brief details. If it’s something that I can deal with within the five minutes, somebody’s literally homeless and they need a hostel and there’s a hostel bed, I would ring the hostel and sort it out that way. If it was a complicated case and say someone who come in presented as literally homeless and they’ve got children and they’re potentially priority, what I would then do is pass them over to a colleague who would investigate, take much more time, so they would investigate the case and then decide whether we need to provide them with emergency accommodation.

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Applicants are entitled to a written decision of the local authority’s investigation and have twenty-one days in which to appeal (Freedom of Information Request 4127). If accepted as homeless, the applicant (and any other person who might reasonably reside with them) is offered a range of options according to their circumstances and requirements, with the aim of discharging the section 193 duty, that is, the duty to persons with priority need who are homeless unintentionally (Housing Act 1996). Applicants who wish to pursue a Part VI offer, that is, the allocation of council housing, fall into two groups - those that are eligible to bid for accommodation on the choice based lettings scheme and those that are ineligible due to past behaviour. For those that are eligible, a priority card is issued for the scheme which is valid for three months (this is not an actual card but a status), after which, if the applicant has been unsuccessful either the card will be extended or an appropriate offer sought outside the bidding process. For those who are not eligible, an appropriate offer is secured outside the bidding process (ibid).

Each homeless application is examined on an individual basis and the local authority’s response is determined by the results of their investigation into the circumstances surrounding the applicants’ homelessness (Robson, 1978). For instance, where rent arrears threaten or cause homelessness, the local authority’s response is at once direct, pragmatic, cautious and controlled:

A lot of the time people are evicted cause they haven’t paid their rent.

There’s times where we pay their rent to get them back into somewhere - two, three times when we pay people’s arrears off. We don’t physically hand the service user the money, we would arrange with the accommodation provider to invoice us, so big amounts of money don’t get handed over to the client so the client cannot take advantage of us.

(Homeless Prevention Officer)

Where domestic violence/abuse is cited as the cause of homelessness, the local authority is prohibited from conducting a thorough and detailed investigation into the applicants’

circumstances as this may exacerbate the situation:

Where somebody presents and they’re fleeing violence, really you have to be very careful because as a local authority when you’re assessing under the homeless legislation, you have to make enquiries into their circumstances and one of those enquiries would be to confirm

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homelessness. But you could never contact somebody where they’ve been accused of being a perpetrator of violence because you could be putting somebody at further risk. (Practitioner with Statutory Responsibility for Rough Sleeping)

That said, where domestic violence/abuse is documented as the cause of homelessness, the applicant is automatically accepted for re-housing. As pointed out by a homeless prevention officer, ‘the vast majority of victims, survivors of domestic violence are female’

(reflecting the ‘violence as a gendered social problem’ discourse outlined in chapter 2).

Under the guise of funding regimes and homeless applications, the local authority legitimately surveys homeless services and homeless women. In the next section, the practitioners’ experience of surveillance is examined in the context of their role as distinct service providers and as mediators between local government and homeless women.