Head of Housing Services has submitted a reporttoupdate the Board on progress of the Oxfordshire Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer programme.

Recommendations:That the City Executive Board resolves to:

Note the outcome of the review and the priorities for the year ahead.

The

The Head of Housing Services had submitted a report to update the Board on progress of the Oxfordshire Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer programme.

The System Change Manager (Homelessness Prevention), introduced the report which summarised progress of the two year programme to date. Delivery of the programme is due to finish in August 2019. The programme had at its heart a series of strong partnerships with, among others, representatives of the health service, justice system and social services. The aims and outcomes of the programme had been agreed collectively. The first six months had been devoted to researching homelessness in Oxfordshire to ensure that the subsequent workstreams were the right ones. The focus now was on developing the learning that  had been achieved so as to leave a lasting legacy. A lot of the value  had been through the simple connection of services with one another where the relevance of such connections hadn’t been appreciated before.

Members of the Board were pleased to see the positive consequences of the programme to date and agreed there was a powerful case for its extension.

The Chair thanked the System Change Manager and said the Board looked forward to hearing more about the programme in due course.

The City Executive Board resolved to:

Note the outcome of the review and the priorities for the year ahead.

To consider a report on the outcome of the year one Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer Programme.

Paul Wilding, Systems Change Manager (Homelessness Prevention), explained that the Trailblazer was a two year programme, funded in the main by MHCLG, focussed on early intervention and support to prevent homelessness. It involved working with other public services providers to work as upstream as possible to identify people at risk of becoming homeless. This was not about filling a gap in provision, but instead about supporting long term systemic connections between services, and helping other services to identify the warning signs of someone at risk of homelessness, and what to do in these circumstances. The report presented to the Panel provided a comprehensive review of year one of the programme, and the quality of the report and level of detail was welcomed by the Panel.

The Systems Change Manager explained that there were three stands to the programme:

1)    Embedded Housing Workers: These workers were located within the criminal justice, health and social care settings to improve the organisational understanding of housing principles and how and when to refer people to relevant support services. A key area already identified as potentially saving money related to speeding up delayed transfers of care, which averaged 31 days when housing was a barrier to exiting hospital.

2)    Community Navigators: These workers sought to identify people at risk of homelessness, and work with them to link them with the relevant services. Some of these people had previous experience of homelessness, and their advice was sometimes heeded more reciprocally than it would otherwise be from a council officer.

3)    Homeless Champions Network: The network supported the upskilling of ~60 people working in partner organisations to broaden their understanding of the housing system, and how to make effective referrals. The process had already found a lack of knowledge within partner organisations about peoples housing entitlements and the housing allocations process. It was hoped that this would help instil a legacy within these organisations of providing more effective referrals and advice to service users.

The Panel asked for more information about what the programme had found in year one. The Systems Change Manager explained that many people were left in beds when they were medically fit, because they did not have a home to be discharged too. The report highlighted that 2744 days had been accumulated for people awaiting discharge for this reasons within year one, totalling an indicative cost of £1.2m to the NHS.

The Chair highlighted that in relation to embedded housing workers, 103 cases had unknown outcomes, and that this uncertainty in the data may hinder any future funding bids to Central Government to extend the programme. The Systems Change Manager said that recording in this area would likely improve, but it highlighted that the sometimes brief and chaotic interactions do not lend themselves to effective tracking of outcomes. One example was given where people discharge themselves early from hospital, without providing a destination or discussing with the embedded workers.

Councillor Howett asked about opportunities for pooled funding arrangements, and future funding of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 174