Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring Models for Providing More Effective Local Support

Research from Communities Scotland Report 69

Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Mark Bevan and Julie Rugg,The Centre for Housing Policy, University of York

September 2006

Research and Evaluation Communities Scotland, Thistle House 91 Haymarket Terrace, Edinburgh EH12 5HE

i Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Communities Scotland.

II Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Contents

Acknowledgements iv

List of Tables and Figures v

Executive summary vi

1 Introduction 1

2 Providing homelessness support services in rural areas: barriers and opportunities 9

3 Evaluating models of homelessness support services for rural and remote areas 29

4 Conclusions 47

References 57

Appendix 1 Definitions 63

Appendix 2 Topic guide for service providers 69

III Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the respondents who kindly helped us with this research.

This research was funded by Communities Scotland. A special thanks is due to the advisory group who provided invaluable help and guidance throughout the project: Margaret Brown; Anna Donald; Isobel Grigor; Simon McLean; Hilary Parkey; Stephen Sandham; Sheree Sartain; Ralph Throp and Susan Vass. Thanks are also due to Lynne Lonsdale, Centre for Housing Policy, for her help in the production of this report.

IV Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

List of Tables

Table 1 Summary of four potential support service models for rural and remote areas 33 Table 2 Summarising the early intervention model 37 Table 3 Summarising the dispersed model 41 Table 4 Summarising the enhanced access model 43 Table 5 Summarising the capacity development model 46

V Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Executive summary

Introduction This research considers a range of support service models intended to help prevent homelessness, or to resolve homelessness when it does occur, in rural and remote rural areas. The research looks at both the content and means of delivery of such support services and also extends to give attention to the provision of temporary accommodation, training, counselling and help with addiction related problems and other personal support and activities. Although there are many potential models of support services for homeless households, their applicability to the diverse range of circumstances that exist in the rural and remote areas of Scotland requires close examination. Furthermore, there are examples of more generic services that already operate in rural and remote areas that are not related to support for homeless households, but the underlying principles that make such services work effectively in the rural context may have the potential for replication in meeting the support needs of homeless households or people at risk of homelessness in these areas.

The report examines the literature in relation to delivering support services in rural areas, and considers the characteristics of rural and remote rural areas that may affect how services are delivered. The literature highlights that whilst there are already models of support services that exist in rural and remote areas of Scotland, there are also models of support services operating in urban areas of Scotland, in other countries within the UK, and also outside the UK context, that might have potential for replication or modification for rural areas in Scotland. The report then sets out a possible framework for evaluating models of support services in rural areas that could be used to assess the veracity of possible solutions. The research illustrates how this framework might be applied using four examples of approaches to support services in the rural context.

Although the focus of the report is how homelessness support services can be developed and configured in rural and remote areas, the main objective underpinning the report remains the outcomes for the people who need to use these services. At the core of service design is the aim of helping people to meet their own potential, which means tackling homelessness support issues in the broader context of meeting the wide ranging and diverse needs of individuals, through prevention, early intervention, ongoing support, capacity building and access to choices.

The intention of the report is to provide further information as to what could constitute realistic models for homelessness support services that could be used to deliver services to rural areas at an operational level. In so doing, the report aims to encourage strategic thinking on how homelessness support services can best be provided in rural areas.

Barriers and opportunities for developing support services for homeless households in rural areas A key lesson from the literature was that addressing support needs in rural and remote areas needs to be ‘done differently’, compared with services provided in urban contexts. An overarching principle for delivering support services is that a holistic approach involving sound joined up working to meet the needs of different clients is required, with access to specialised services supported from

VI Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support an area hub. The approach of providing generic support in rural and remote areas has been noted as a potential model for other forms of service provision, and not just in relation to meeting the needs of homelessness people. For example, the Effective Interventions Unit (2004) - now the Substance Misuse Team - stated that one of the key influences on the range and capacity of services available to drug users in rural and remote areas was the extent to which generic services addressed drug misuse problems among their clients. Another key principle to emerge from the literature and from discussions with practitioners is the value of community led solutions, and also building on existing capacity in rural areas, both in the statutory and voluntary sectors.

One of the challenges facing homeless people and agencies seeking to address the support needs of homeless households in rural areas is a lack of awareness and acceptance of homelessness in rural areas by the wider community. This issue may lead to difficulties both in identifying the extent of needs, but also resistance to the development of services to meet the needs of homeless people within some rural communities.

A way of achieving help for homeless people in rural areas through the provision of support is through raising the profile of homelessness in rural areas. This approach could help to:

G Identify needs;

G Lobby for resources, and

G Encourage the development of local, community based solutions. Awareness raising could form part of the role of Rural Housing Enablers and agencies conducting housing needs surveys in rural communities, although this task would need to be recognised as a discrete role that required funding. Part of raising awareness of support services is to try and overcome the stigma that some people may feel in relation to asking for help. One factor here is labelling someone as ‘homeless’, as part of the process of accessing support services. A further consideration is that people may not perceive that they are in a ‘homeless’ situation and therefore are not eligible for support, even though they may well fall well within the remit of the preventative role of support that agencies can provide.

A further consideration for providing support services in rural areas is ensuring confidentiality and anonymity as far as possible, particularly in situations where homeless people may know individual members of staff of statutory or voluntary agencies that operate in their area. This has implications for raising awareness of alternatives for people who may be experiencing homelessness, or at risk of homelessness, such as freephone advice lines, or the availability of services in other neighbouring communities or urban centres where anonymity is more assured.

VII Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

on a more generic or agency role, not only in the context of recognising homelessness, but also other issues, for example, such as substance misuse. There are limits to the extent to which staff can realistically be expected to bolt on additional tasks and roles. This issue calls for effective working at strategic level to coordinate between competing demands on staff time, and perhaps linking to the existing structures such as Joint Future in relation to the development of a ‘whole systems approach’ of partnership working to support meeting the needs of homeless households.

Developing a model of support for rural or remote areas thus has implications for structures of support for staff. One factor is the provision of training tailored to a context where staff may be expected to adopt a wide range of skills and areas of knowledge in order to meet the requirements for providing a generic service. A way of tackling a lower skill base amongst potential employees is to budget for an enhanced training and induction programme for employees. A further solution is to provide a supportive network for the exchange of information and to enable building links with other agencies.

Working with local communities A critical element in developing support services in rural and remote areas is to build upon existing capacity, either through community led solutions or voluntary sector activity, backed up by statutory providers. In addition, service providers can also enhance the potential offered by formal and informal support networks. This approach can build upon services such as mentoring, befriending and life skills, either through more professionalised services directly provided by statutory or voluntary agencies, or developing the role of volunteers and the capacity of social networks in rural and remote rural areas. However, it is also necessary for there to be alternatives for people, to get out of communities if they feel the need, or if abusive situations require action.

Developing and maintaining a physical presence for services in rural areas One option for support in relation to maintaining or enhancing their physical presence in rural and remote areas is through sharing buildings with other agencies. Co-locating services can be valuable as one strategy for minimising the effects of remoteness, and there are number of examples in Scotland of local arrangements for access to premises held by a wide range of agencies. However, there is a balance to be struck between providing a physical presence in rural areas, and ensuring that a service centre can meet needs of a wide catchment area. Multi-service outlets need to be accessible for public transport, which suggests small urban centres, rather than in outlaying rural communities, otherwise the outlet will be inaccessible for any households who live outside the community in which the outlet is based.

Coordinating support services Although there are likely to be gaps in services in rural areas, a key element in this approach is the effective coordination of services to maximise the potential contribution that providers can make in any one area, and to make most effective use of the services and agencies that do exist. This approach also means building up the capacity of existing services on the ground, rather than necessarily starting up new services from scratch.

VIII Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support role of volunteers and the capacity of social networks in rural and remote rural areas. Helping to support and accommodate people within their own communities can reap dividends in terms of providing the means to help people to help themselves through their own family and broader social networks.

However, a further complication is that service providers know that they need to be sensitive to the issue of preserving the anonymity of people experiencing homelessness in small rural communities, which has implications of the way that services can be delivered in rural localities. Furthermore, it is possible that some people are less likely to come forward and make use of a service, if they feel that their confidentiality cannot be ensured.

Developing a framework for evaluating models of homelessness support services in rural areas

An important element of the evaluation is the need to acknowledge the importance of the wider context in which a service may operate, factoring in issues such as the local housing market, and the availability of affordable housing choices both in terms of temporary provision and the availability of long term housing solutions. To this end, a number of questions were also developed to help guide the evaluation, and allow a consideration of the service against circumstances that exist in diverse rural areas, including the wider contexts in which services will have to operate – the rationale being that models which might work in some rural contexts may be entirely inappropriate in others. Certainly one point arising from discussions with service providers was that a consideration of the replicability of any model needs to include a critical assessment of how far the model is appropriate for the specific local context in which the model would be expected to operate. Models cannot be taken ‘off the shelf’ and be expected to work in all circumstances. One example of a way that this issue is being addressed is through the DESERVE project. This initiative takes models of rural service delivery that operate in a variety of countries within the European Union and tests how far they can be applied in different countries, including Scotland (see www.nppdeserve.info).

The research put forward an evaluative framework to assess potential models of support services. In practice, the framework could be used to assess the extent to which potential models might be developed in rural and remote areas, highlighting issues that need to be overcome, elements of models that could be replicated or perhaps might need to be revised to reflect the circumstances that exist in particular localities. Four indicators were used to examine to what extent the models were: viable; sustainable; effective and accessible. These headings are explored in more detail below:

Viable G a key factor affecting the vision for addressing the homelessness support needs in rural and remote area is: how much will it cost? In the context of this research, which drew upon evaluations of existing services, it was often not possible to provide costings that a service was likely to incur since these were based on the evaluations of services that exist in much of the literature. However, even in the absence of costings, it may be possible to provide some indication of the scale of a service and the nature of the catchment area required to achieve adequate numbers of clients.

IX Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Sustainable G are the benefits of a model likely to be sustainable - and sustainable for whom?

G first and foremost, for the person using the service in terms of outcomes and personal development attuned to their individual needs;

G for the service provider, in terms of developing and maintaining the service.

G what are the possibilities for long-term funding?

G how far do the indicators used to monitor and assess projects address the extent to which models offer the opportunity to sustain long-term outcomes for homeless people? (i.e. the cheapest options for services may not offer the best solutions in the long run).

G what would be required to achieve sustainability? (for example, staff training, networking).

G what are the risks inherent in the model? Are there risks that are outside the control of service providers? How far can risks be minimised?

Effective G If evaluations of the service exist in the literature, then it may be possible to give an indication of effectiveness, although the context in which the service was delivered would be crucial here, and would require a consideration of how far good practice was transferable to the context of rural Scotland. This element is based on material available from the literature and also interviewee’s perceptions of effectiveness and appropriateness of services in the context of rural Scotland.

G will the service aim to tackle short term, emergency interventions, or how far does the service have the capacity to help to achieve long term outcomes for homeless people?

G does the service include the views of homeless people in its development and ongoing monitoring?

Accessible G physical access to the service/reliance on transport networks for clients; remote access via telephone or online;

G access in terms of awareness by service users and also awareness by other practitioners who can link into the service;

G access which can ensure the anonymity and confidentiality of service users;

G access to choices that suit the individual needs of a service user.

To illustrate how the evaluation might work in practice, the research presented four suggested models that aimed to address the following issues:

1) Early intervention To address in a focussed way the needs of particular households where it is felt that there is a risk that chronic homelessness will become an issue. Work rests on the proactive recognition of households where there are early indications that housing problems may become chronic (i.e. households with anti-social behaviour issues; where rental arrears have been evident; where

X Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support there have been instances of domestic violence, etc). A model of early intervention could be used to meet the needs of a range of households, depending on the particular configuration of needs identified by local authorities and other agencies within any given rural and remote area. However, the example used in this research was Safe Moves, which was a preventative model to assist young people who are at risk of homelessness.

2) Dispersed To ensure the delivery of appropriate services outwith the larger settlement areas of a local authority and so keep households in the locations in which they may have informal support networks. This may be applicable for authorities which have good levels of service development in the larger settlement, and where ‘outreach’ services/floating support may be grafted on to a strong central management and service core. The following examples highlight support services which have a strong focus on prevention and that offer floating support as the means of delivery. Shelter has developed models of support in England and Scotland to help homeless households to resettle and sustain their tenancies. Homeless to Home was a model of floating support developed by Shelter in England to provide resettlement and tenancy sustainment support for households who have experienced homelessness. In Scotland, Shelter has developed a number of projects in both urban and rural areas to help families and also single people.

3) Enhanced access To ensure that information about services is available to individuals and communities that might otherwise remain outwith mainstream provision. This approach draws in all agencies to ensure that front-line staff in health, housing and welfare are thoroughly aware of the breadth of service available to households in need. Frontline agencies that deliver services in rural and remote areas can act as information ‘triggers’ for households who may have diverse vulnerabilities. Staff in a variety of agencies would be in a position to refer on, or signpost, as necessary and appropriate, to other agencies. Specific training would be required to enable staff who work in rural areas to take on this more generic role. A key element of this role would be the requirement for clear strategies and protocols to be in place for dealing with referrals, signposting and establishing an understanding of each agency’s role and the setting of identifiable boundaries between agencies of the services that each will provide.

4) Capacity development To develop the capacity of communities to support households in need of housing assistance. For example, adopting a ‘nightstop’ model, volunteers would be trained in order to offer essential advice and in some cases offer temporary housing for households facing difficulties. Volunteers offering practical and emotional support through befriending and/or handyperson services could also give an accommodation sustainment role. This model might be developed in authorities with extremely dispersed populations, and where need is likely to arise intermittently but urgently.

Conclusion The research has drawn on evidence as to why people become or remain homeless, and has sought to make links between an analysis of the problems and possible solutions in rural and remote areas. The range of examples of support services that either already exist, or that could be replicated, in rural and remote rural areas demonstrate the value of pursuing specific models that

XI Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

address homelessness within rural localities. It is hoped that the models highlighted in this report demonstrate a positive way in which services can be developed to meet local needs. However, no single model offers an ‘off the shelf’ solution that will be relevant to all the diverse circumstances that exists in rural and remote areas. Instead, the research has suggested an evaluative framework which could be used to assess the applicability of models in rural areas, and it would be valuable to see how far the framework has ‘buy in’ from practitioners and service users as a useful way forwards.

Recommendations A key lesson from the literature is that addressing support needs in rural and remote areas needs to be ‘done differently’, compared with services provided in urban contexts. There is a sense that operating in areas with very geographically dispersed communities requires agencies to be ‘all things to all people’. While there may be low numbers of service users in any one locality, the people who do require support may have very diverse needs. However, since the range of services operating in many rural and remote areas may well be very limited, there is a pressure on the support services that do operate in these areas to respond meaningfully to these diverse needs in situ, by being able to deploy a wide range of skills. This feature of working in rural and remote areas has also been noted in healthcare settings, where it has been suggested that health services need to formally recognise and nurture the ways of working that best meet the needs of households who live in rural and remote areas. There are a number of recommendations that flow from this overall conclusion:

1) A holistic approach involving sound joined up working to meet the needs of different clients is a central principle underlying how services can be configured within rural and remote areas. Using a person centred approach to meeting the specific support needs of individuals, as well as addressing their housing circumstances, requires a holistic method of delivery that is central to how services could be configured within rural and remote areas. The Joint Future agenda is an example of a strategic model that might be helpful in considering how voluntary and statutory agencies can enable access to services for people at risk of homelessness in rural areas that spans all areas of personal well-being in health, housing and social care. The support requirements of homeless households or people at risk of homelessness could form one aspect of a range of needs which could be addressed within a generalised service, which might also include responding to a wider range of needs including, for example, substance misuse, mental health issues etc. The implications of this style of approach would be: G a generic signposting role for frontline staff across a range of agencies; G training, and perhaps accreditation, to reflect joint working; G training, and perhaps accreditation, to acknowledge the range of skills required by agencies that operate specifically in rural and remote localities; G joint working between agencies responsible for funding, including standardised and uniform monitoring requirements that avoid the need for service providers to duplicate effort; G joint approaches at strategic level to facilitate the cross boundary working required to arrive at a generalised approach and to provide the mutual trust between partner agencies to avoid issues such as cost shunting, and to avoid overloading frontline staff.

XII Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

2) Helping homeless service users or households at risk of homelessness to access services requires specialist support.

Adopting a generalised approach might also require a more specialised support service for homeless people or people at risk of homelessness. Fitzpatrick et al (2004) found that homeless families lacked the confidence, motivation or skills to access mainstream services, even if it was appropriate for their needs, without some sort of specialist assistance to act as a bridge to these services. Further, this report noted that the provision of information about mainstream services, whilst important, was not sufficient. However, it is important that this kind of support can be provided to as broad a base of service users as possible. There may be potential for some elements of specialised help to be provided across different client groups, and this approach may help to make some specialised services more accessible within rural localities, since they can cover different types of household.

3) Ensuring the confidentiality of service users is a particular facet of rural service delivery, and requires multiple options for people to have different routes into services.

Living in small communities brings with it the potential for greater visibility on the part of households or individuals who may be experiencing a range of issues, one of which might be homelessness or the risk of homelessness. Trying to ensure the confidentiality of service users is a particular facet of rural service delivery, and requires multiple options for people to have routes into services. Although there may be considerable potential for volunteers in rural areas, there also needs to be clear signposting to alternatives for people who do not want to raise any personal issues with people in their own communities, such as telephone advice lines, or central drop in services in larger settlements.

4) Developing community capacity is a key element in developing a response to the needs of homeless households or households at risk of homelessness within rural and remote localities.

An issue in many rural areas is that the need for a homelessness support service is likely to arise intermittently in any one community. Developing community capacity may offer one solution to this aspect of needs in rural areas since volunteers can respond as and when they are required. As such volunteers may be in a position to provide advice and signposting, or even emergency accommodation in the form of a rural nightstop, to provide short term accommodation whilst the needs of a household are assessed. Emergency services have developed expertise in delivering a ‘First Responder’ approach to addressing on the spot cover in some rural and remote rural localities, and it may be the case that a ‘First responder’ style of approach could be developed in relation to homeless support services. Further, there may be lessons that can be learnt from existing ‘First Responder’ services in terms of providing training, coordination and managing this style of approach in the context of homeless support services. Developing community capacity within rural communities would require a coordinating role to initiate, sustain and support voluntary activity in communities and to build upon existing capacity.

XIII Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Identifying the most appropriate responses in particular locations might involve linking together needs assessments with an appraisal of local resources, including the potential for communities to develop and undertake support. A consideration of the latter might develop as one element of the Community Planning process. The aim would be to develop an options appraisal that would draw together the analysis of needs and also the review of local resources in such a way that could feed into local authority Local Housing Strategies and Homelessness Strategies.

6) Working in rural and remote localities poses specific challenges in terms of finding, training and valuing staff

Recognising the recruitment and retention issues in many rural areas with regard to staffing also goes hand in hand with tailoring training to meet the challenges of working in rural localities where a wide range of skills and knowledge may be required to meet needs which, although numerically small, may well be very diverse.

7) Identifying potential models for service delivery in the future can be aided by effective service evaluations Service evaluations can be a strong driver towards improving delivery as well as contributing to a body of evidence about ‘what works’ and which aspects of models might be replicated and used in other areas. A key element of an evaluation should be to ask the individuals who use the service about their views and experiences, as well as using evaluations to spell out all the costs involved in devising, setting up and running support services. The report has highlighted a number of examples of existing services, but in many cases the value of these services as possible models that could be replicated in other rural and remote areas remain untested because they are not supported by an evaluation to help guide future service development.

XIV Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

1 Introduction

This research considers a range of support service models intended to help prevent homelessness, or to resolve homelessness when it does occur, in rural and remote rural areas. The research looks at both the content and means of delivery of such support services and also extends to give attention to the provision of temporary accommodation, training, counselling and help with addiction related problems and other personal support and activities. The report examines the literature in relation to delivering support services in rural areas, and considers the characteristics of rural and remote rural areas that may affect how services are delivered. The literature highlights a number of examples of homelessness support services that have been developed specifically for the diverse circumstances that exist in different rural and remote rural localities and also a range of approaches that could be developed in the future. Whilst there are already models of support services that exist in rural and remote areas of Scotland, there are also models of support services operating in urban areas of Scotland, in other countries within the UK, and also outside the UK context, that might have potential for replication or modification for rural areas in Scotland. The report then sets out a possible framework for evaluating models of support services in rural areas that could be used to assess the veracity of possible solutions. The research illustrates how this framework might be applied using four examples of approaches to support services in the rural context. Although the focus of the report is how homelessness support services can be developed and configured in rural and remote areas, the main objective underpinning the report remains the outcome for the people who need to use such services. At the core of service design is to help people to help themselves to cope independently, which means tackling homelessness support issues in the context of meeting the wide ranging and diverse needs of individuals, through prevention, early intervention, ongoing support and capacity building (see Appendix One).

Chapter one provides a background to the policy context, before setting out the definitions of homelessness, rural and remote areas that were used in the report. The chapter then goes on to describe the aims of the project and the methods that were used.

Aims and Objectives The overall objective of the research was to increase the understanding of models of service delivery for homelessness support, which are, or potentially might be, applied in rural and remote areas in order to prevent or resolve homelessness and propose models which can be developed and investigated further.

The aims of the research were therefore to: G Demonstrate a comprehensive contextual understanding of rural and remote homelessness issues; G Identify models of service delivery to resolve homelessness in rural and remote areas, for example outreach models, IT solutions;

1 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

G Identify preventative action such as work with schools and also consider the residual impact of action taken under two on the wider environment, for example enabling people to remain in their community;

G Take account of any existing research to demonstrate an understanding of the wider public perception of homelessness in communities and the way communities connect with services;

G Identify the particular dynamics and the barriers to service development in rural and remote rural areas;

G Draw lessons and good practice from service delivery models which have been used in Scotland, or in other geographical locations, within or outwith the UK, and from different sectors including the public and voluntary sectors, and if appropriate, the private sector to highlight the specific components of services and their appropriateness to rural service delivery;

G Develop a set of criteria and evaluate against the range of criteria the strengths and weaknesses of models of service delivery; and

G Identify development solutions and recommend services and associated delivery models which can be investigated further or piloted in rural Scotland.

Background A consideration of the provision of effective local support in rural and remote rural areas takes place against a backdrop of rapid change in the recent homelessness policy context in Scotland. Shortly after devolution, in August 1999, a Homelessness Task Force (HTF) was set up by the Scottish Executive to review the causes of homelessness in Scotland, to examine current practice in dealing with cases of homelessness and to make recommendations on how homelessness in Scotland could best be prevented, and where it does occur, tackled effectively. Recommendations in the HTF’s first report, published in April 2000, formed the basis of the homelessness provisions in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001. The HTF final report, published early in 2002, contained 59 recommendations intended to achieve a ‘step-reduction’ in homelessness in Scotland over a 10-year period. Further changes to the homelessness legislation in Scotland were enacted in the Homeless Etc. (Scotland) Act 2003. The subsequent Ministerial Statement on the abolition of priority need, published in December 2005, reported the objective established in legislation that by 2012, everyone who is homeless in Scotland will be entitled to permanent rehousing, except for a small number of intentionally homeless people for whom this right will be suspended temporarily. The establishment of an inalienable right to some form of accommodation and support was a radical departure from the previous Scottish position (Fitzpatrick, 2003). A key element of the HTF report in the context of this tender was the emphasis that homelessness was not just a housing problem, but that support was often just as crucial in achieving sustainable resettlement. Further, a ‘one size fits all’ approach would not work, with the Task Force concluding ‘all the varying needs of people affected by homelessness must be addressed individually, effectively and flexibly’ (Scottish Executive, 2001).

The Scottish Executive (2005a) has set out the implications of the evidence base on homelessness for the preparation by councils to meet the 2012 commitment. Based on research from Tribal HCH , the Scottish Executive compared the outturn and projections for four groups of councils, one group of

2 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support which comprised mainly rural councils. The mainly rural councils experienced the highest rate of growth in homelessness between 2001-02 and 2003-04. Further, based on assumptions provided by the local authorities, the projected need of homeless households either obtaining or requiring permanent accommodation for the mainly rural councils roughly doubles on all projections, from about 3000 social lets per year to around 6000 by 2011-12. Clearly, indications show that authorities are going to experience increasing pressure on their resources to accommodate these policy changes.

Recent research has drawn attention to homelessness in rural areas as a significant but under-emphasised problem (Cloke et al, 2001a). Certainly the extent of homelessness in rural areas is a contested area. One factor concerns the methods used to estimate rural homelessness. Research has also highlighted the limits of traditional methods of quantifying homelessness in rural areas in England (Cloke et al, 2001a; Robinson and Reeve, 2001). Another factor concerns a lack of awareness, or acceptance, of the incidence of homelessness within rural areas by rural communities themselves (Jones, 1999). Research has noted that homelessness in rural areas tends to be much less visible than in urban areas, and it is the hidden nature of homelessness in many rural areas that can lead to under-recording within rural communities (Evans, 1999; Cloke et al, 2001b). Burns (2005) has demonstrated the value of using a multi-agency approach to record rural homelessness drawing on diverse sources of data in both the voluntary and statutory sectors. Further, Burns (2005) has argued that a significant shift has taken place in the way that rural homelessness in Northumberland is perceived, and that the debate has moved on from whether or not there is a youth homelessness problem in rural Northumberland to an assessment of the level of the problem and the causal factors. An important finding by Burns (2005) was that the increase in reported levels of rural homelessness in Northumberland were probably not due to an actual increase, but because improvements in the recording of rural homelessness reflected a truer picture of the situation. Such developments appear to develop an impetus of their own, with young people who experience homelessness in this rural part of England apparently more likely to register the fact and have more opportunities to access accommodation and support.

Potentially, therefore, there will be a dual pressure on providers who operate in rural areas of Scotland in future years. Firstly, the 2012 commitment is projected to significantly increase demand on authorities to house homeless households. Secondly, evidence suggests that improvement in measuring rural homelessness and the provision of accommodation and support through demonstration projects can lead to an upswing in recorded levels of homelessness within rural localities, rather than deflected towards urban centres.

Cloke et al (2001b) have pointed out that in the main, responses to homelessness in rural England have tended to be spatially concentrated in the main urban settlements. They found that in rural areas there were relatively few advice and support facilities for homeless people, such as hostels, shelters, temporary accommodation or advice centres. Instead, homeless people were more likely to migrate away from rural localities and move to urban areas in an attempt to address their needs. This factor presents a difficulty in recording the extent of homelessness in rural areas, as it may appear that most homeless presentations to local authorities originate in urban areas, when a proportion of these are from surrounding rural areas. The extent to which this factor becomes a genuine problem for the homeless people themselves is if they would prefer to remain in the rural community they have left behind. Evans

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(1999) found that the majority of homeless people interviewed stated that they would prefer to remain living in a rural area, although these responses did vary by age - younger people were much more inclined to be negative about rural areas. Nevertheless, most respondents to the research by Evans (1999) noted that realistically they would have to gravitate to towns and cities to meet their needs. A further complication to this is that service providers know that they need to be sensitive to the issue of preserving the anonymity of people experiencing homelessness in small rural communities, which has implications of the way that services can be delivered in rural localities. Furthermore, it is possible that some people are less likely to come forward and make use of a service, if they feel that their confidentiality cannot be ensured.

Broader issues may exacerbate the potential for feelings of social or cultural isolation in rural areas, leading to an increased risk of homelessness. Roche (2005) has highlighted that sexuality and sexual identity can play a key role in the onset of homelessness and also noted that lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender (LGBT) youths tend to migrate to urban centres shortly after moving out (or being forced out) of their home. Research has also noted feelings of isolation amongst minority ethnic households in rural areas (Netto et al 2001). Isolation can be accentuated by experiences of racism, which can occur as much in rural areas as it does in urban centres, except that rural localities often lack the support structures to counter these experiences (Netto et al 2001).

Whilst it is possible to identify specific characteristics of rural homelessness, Cloke et al (2000) pointed out that key similarities exist in the profile of homelessness in rural and urban areas. The research by Cloke et al (2000) also noted marked intra-rural variations in homelessness profiles, highlighting the importance of an appreciation of differences between rural localities, sometimes within the same local authority.

Funding for support services may be available from a variety of sources, such as health, the voluntary sector and local authorities. Research on models of homelessness support services in rural areas must take account of the broader context, and the likelihood of capital and revenue funding being available to support new services for the rural homeless.

A consideration of this broader context of service design can usefully take place within existing policy initiatives such as the Joint Future agenda (see the webpages on the Scottish Executive website: www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Health/care/JointFuture). This initiative aims to enable local agencies across health, housing, social care and support to work in partnership at all levels to plan and deliver joint services across organisational boundaries and delegate decision making to front line staff. The Community Planning process is a key location for facilitating the Joint Future approach. Crucially for rural areas, it enables partners to look together at the needs profile within the whole community, but also in particular localities. Further, it can look at all the existing resources to meet the needs of the local population. One principle underpinning this process is the use of the ‘whole systems’ approach. The aim of this approach is to recognise and maximise the contribution that can be made by partners through providing a range of services both within and beyond the traditional boundaries of health, housing, social care and support, and also to look at things that impact one upon the other. One way of achieving these relationships is by developing links between Local Homelessness Strategies and other plans (e.g. Health plans), to develop joined up ways of working, protocols and procedures etc.

4 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Supporting People serves to provide homelessness support through its role in providing housing support services. This programme was introduced in April 2003, and is an integrated policy and funding framework for housing support services that is administered by local authorities. The aim of this programme has been to provide good quality services, focused on the needs of service users, to enable vulnerable people to live independently in the community, in all types of accommodation and tenure. In 2004, a new formula for redistributing Supporting People money was announced, with 30 per cent funding allocated against local homelessness rates (and 30 per cent against the proportion of older people in each local authority area, 20 per cent against the number of people claiming Disability living Allowance, and 20 per cent against deprivation). At the same time, an overall cut of 6 per cent in the Supporting People budget was set to take place over a three year period. This change in overall funding operates in the context of the policy shift towards giving homeless people further rights to housing support services though elements of the Homelessness etc (Scotland) Act 2003, parts of which go live from 2006. Research by Shelter Scotland (2005c) has highlighted a concern amongst those local authorities that received reduced funding under the new formula that these changes would have a negative impact on services to homeless people, particularly in relation to prevention services. However some other rural and island councils received an increase in Supporting People funding as a result of the redistribution process, which may of course improve support for homeless people in such areas.

Support services for homeless people also sit within a broader framework for the prevention and alleviation of homelessness. The Scottish Executive (2005b) set out its Health and Homelessness Standards as a next step in responding to the health needs of homeless people in Scotland. The Standards are intended to be strategic, operating at corporate level of NHS Boards, with the principal delivery of the Standards through Community Health Partnerships.

There is a rural dimension to the health needs of homeless people, partly influenced by the response to the range of accommodation that is available to housing agencies to meet the housing needs of homeless people in rural areas. For example, homeless families may spend longer in temporary accommodation in rural areas than in urban areas (Fitzpatrick et al 2005). The Scottish Executive (2005b) noted some of the health problems that can arise from living in these circumstances, including an increased risk of dermatological problems, musculoskeletel problems, poor obstetric outcomes and a range of mental health problems.

The response of health practitioners to working in a rural context highlights a key element of Health and Homelessness Standards, which is in relation to joint working between agencies. The Scottish Executive (2005b) highlighted the example of the NHS Dumfries and Galloway area Local Rural Partnerships which bring together representatives from local businesses, education services, housing services, primary care services and a range of voluntary sector providers to address the specific needs of their rural communities. The Partnership thus uses existing structures to coordinate the needs of homeless people and the response from the community, and is an opportunity to localise the approach to improving the health of homeless people and also lead to the development of a greater understanding of the issues on the part of local people.

5 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

The experience of health agencies in relation to operating in a rural setting may also offer pointers towards more generic aspects of rural service delivery, the underlying principles of which could be incorporated into models of support services for homeless people. For example, there may be transferable good practice for homelessness support services in the principles underpinning the promotion of joint working as a key concept in rural healthcare based around rural general hospitals, rural specific generalist training and accreditation, and improved communications technology (Douglas, 2005). The Health and Homelessness Needs Assessment for Argyll & Clyde (2002) also emphasised the value of multi-agency training for all staff dealing with homelessness and of particular benefit in raising the profile of homelessness in the more rural and remote areas of the Argyll & Clyde area where there are minimal services supporting homeless people.

Furthermore, existing reviews of good practice in the delivery of services in rural Scotland highlight examples that could be tailored to address the needs of homeless people in these localities. Pickering (2003) noted a range of approaches that could be applied in various rural settings in Scotland, including the sharing of premises, mobile facilities, new technology and community run services. These approaches will be explored in greater detail in this report. However, the latter approach, community run services, is of particular interest because of the growing impetus surrounding the development of social economy organisations. There are two factors here of relevance for this report. The first is that rural areas have significantly higher numbers of social economy organisations per head of population than the rest of Scotland (Social Economy Scotland, 2005), which suggests that there are the capacities and skills to develop support services for homeless people in rural areas by such organisations. The second factor there has been a steady increase of national interest in public service delivery by social economy organisations in recent times, particularly those focusing on delivering public services to meet the needs of hard to reach groups and of tackling poverty and disadvantage.

Methods The methods had two main stages. Firstly, a literature review and collection of data, which drew primarily upon interviews with a range of stakeholders that operate in rural areas. Secondly, an evaluation of possible models which could be investigated further.

1) Literature review and data collection: The literature review utilised a variety of sources to identify policy relevant literature, including grey literature and explored databases such as ASSIA, SIGLE, and a search of relevant websites.

The research drew upon existing reviews of homelessness support in rural areas as a starting point in the collection of evidence. These reviews also provided the material for identifying potential models for further examination. The review also explored relevant international literature on this matter. For example, rural homelessness has been a focus of much attention in the USA withinin both academic and policy literatures. This interest within the USA is ongoing, and further material on tackling homelessness in rural areas will be available later in 2006, which may have relevance for the Scottish context (see Rollinson and Pardeck, (forthcoming)).

The project also included a small-scale consultation exercise with key stakeholders in Scotland operating in a rural context to identify possible models

6 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support in rural areas. This exercise involved telephone interviews with rural local authorities, Shelter, The Scottish Council for Single Homeless and Scottish Churches Housing Action. The process of consultation included a workshop to obtain feedback from service providers on the issues identified by the research in relation to the development of support services for homeless people in rural areas, including possible models of support services noted in the research.

2) Evaluation of models An evaluative framework was developed to assess the extent to which support service models are: viable; sustainable; effective and accessible in rural and remote rural areas.

Chapter 2 of this report introduces a range of challenges and constraints facing providers in the way in that services and support can be delivered to areas encompassing scattered rural communities with low population densities. The framework then enabled the models to be evaluated in the context of these challenges and constraints within the diverse rural environments that exist across Scotland. In terms of making this framework operational, therefore, the evaluation assessed each model’s strengths and weaknesses against each indicator, informed by a consideration of the extent to which each model can overcome such constraints and challenges.

Therefore, a key element of the evaluation was the need to acknowledge the importance of the wider context in which a service operates, factoring in issues such as the local housing market and the diverse circumstances that exist in rural areas. Models which might work in some rural contexts may be entirely inappropriate in others. In addition, it may be the case that some aspects of services that are delivered in urban settings might also be applicable in rural areas.

Structure of the report Chapter 2 highlights the barriers and opportunities for providing homelessness support services in rural areas. The chapter moves on to discuss the types of support service that could be provided in rural areas, focusing on more generic forms of support before examining specialist support options. The specific aims of the research, as set out earlier from (1) through to (6), are explored in this chapter. Aims (6) and (7) are covered in Chapter three, which examines potential models of homelessness support services for rural and remote areas. The chapter presents a framework for evaluating potential models, and then sets out four approaches that could be applied in rural and remote areas. Research Aim (8) is explored in chapter four, which sets out the conclusions of the research. Appendix 1 provides a description of the definitions used in this report. Appendix 2 shows the topic used in the telephone interviews with service providers.

7 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

8 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

2 Providing homelessness support services in rural areas: barriers and opportunities

Introduction

This chapter highlights both the barriers and opportunities for providing homelessness support services in rural areas. The chapter sets out a number of the barriers facing service providers who operate in rural localities. The discussion describes generic forms of support, highlighting accommodation options, accessing information and advice, co-ordinating support services, supporting staff who work in rural localities, and the role of prevention, using the example of working in schools. The chapter also describes co-locating services in rural areas, working with local communities, and specifically building on the potential of maintaining and supporting social networks. Finally, the chapter examines specialist support options in rural areas, focusing on experiences of providing Women’s Aid in rural areas.

Barriers Research has identified a number of factors that affect the provision of support services in rural areas, such as: higher costs associated with providing a service in circumstances where practitioners have to travel considerable distances to meet clients or vicea versa; low supplies of available affordable housing; poor economies of scale means that the cost of providing services, particularly specialist services, is far higher and more difficult to fund; low numbers of clients can make the development of specialist services less viable; people may be less willing to access services or present themselves as homeless because they know or are known by the staff involved, and also that homelessness tends to be more ‘hidden’ in rural areas and therefore it can be more difficult to target preventative or support services (The Highland Council, 2002).

From the telephone survey, respondents identified a number of gaps in current support services to rural and remote rural areas, including intermediate housing and accommodation options, few or fragmented support services for people with mental health problems and a need for more intense support services for people with very chaotic lives. However, two respondents also noted that a significant gap was not so much in the variety of support on offer, but the extent of the available services. This issue raises the question of equality of access, with most respondents noted that services tend to be concentrated in the urban centres of authorities. Nevertheless, two respondents also highlighted that their management practices had altered to tailor their service to the support needs of service users in remoter parts of their authority. One example, was in a case where housing officers made an appointment to see a client on an island, they would aim to visit all households on the waiting list for council accommodation on that island to identify any changed circumstances or needs.

Costs One of the main barriers to emerge from discussions with respondents was the additional costs involved in delivering support services in rural areas. These views about rural areas reflected a more widespread concern that was expressed in the Homelessness Consultation responses to the Scottish

9 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Executive (2005c). One view by put forward by some of the consultees was that the target was not achievable without significant resourcing in the form of additional affordable housing, temporary accommodation provision, and financial resources (often for support work).

A further recurring view was that whilst previous funding through Supporting People had been welcomed and seen to result in improved services to homeless applicants, concern was expressed about the ability to create any new services due to reductions in the grant for some local authorities and the consequent need to ration services, with the result that services may focus on crisis prevention only (Scottish Executive, 2005c). However, it should be noted that some local authorities saw an increase in their level of Supporting People funding.

Certainly there was a concern expressed by a couple of respondents to the telephone survey that preventative services in their area may suffer disproportionately in the future as a result of tighter funding constraints. As one respondent to the telephone survey noted: ‘You can see a lot of the gaps, but it’s demoralising because there aren’t the streams of funding available, even to just implement our strategy’. Research elsewhere has examined the additional costs of delivering services to rural communities (Hindle et al, 2004). The work by Hindle et al (2004) set out three reasons why the cost of delivering services in the rural areas of England may be greater than in urban areas, other things being equal:

G many services require travel either by service providers or by the people being served. Since distances are greater in rural areas, mileage costs are higher;

G although increased mileage may be travelled at greater speeds in rural areas, the differences from urban areas are not sufficient to compensate, giving rise to greater time-related costs;

G demand levels associated with communities tend to be lower and economies of scale are less easily exploited, giving rise to higher running costs (Hindle et al, 2004, p4).

The findings by Hindle et al (2004) were limited to the context of rural areas of England, and circumstances in Scotland may lead to different conclusions, particularly in relation to the potential to travel at greater speeds in rural areas, which may not necessarily be the case in many areas of Scotland. Nevertheless, the research by Hindle et al (2004) quantified the additional costs of travel in the context of rural areas in England, and calculated the extent to which there were additional costs in delivering a common standard of service performance to meet the needs of rural communities compared to similar urban areas.

Other work has also modelled travel-related costs in rural areas (MSA Ferndale, 2002). This research focused on the costs of delivering domiciliary care for older people in England and estimated the actual unit cost of delivery which far outstripped the funding made available (MSA Ferndale, 2002). Such research has cautioned against extrapolating findings about the costs of delivering specific services in rural areas to all services, since each service will have a different profile, depending upon the extent to which travelling activity is a minor or major feature of the service being provided, and also the nature of the travelling behaviour. Nevertheless, the examples cited serve to highlight attempts to quantify the costs of delivering services in rural areas.

10 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Similar research was conducted for both Highland and Argyll and Bute Councils (Paula Gilder Consulting et al, 2004) to identify the costs of delivering services in supersparse areas within these two council areas. Supersparse areas were defined as anywhere which was more than 40 km by road from any settlement with a population of 7000 or more in the 2001 census. 26 per cent of the population of Highland council area were defined as living in supersparse, compared with 20 per cent of the mainland population of Argyll and Bute. Although housing or homelessness support was not included in the analysis, the research by Paula Gilder Consulting et al (2004) found that where services were being delivered in supersparse areas, it cost both councils an additional £15,030,955. Further, in cases where services were being delivered at a lower level than might be considered reasonable, it was estimated that it would cost £1,392,926, to bring services up a level equivalent to that provided in a comparator, non-supersparse area. Hindle et al (2004) pointed out shortcomings in the way that policy makers have attempted to incorporate an adjustment for ‘rurality’ in resource allocation mechanisms, and highlighted the value of combining sparsity and distance variables in the design of indicators. In its submission to the Finance Committee deprivation inquiry, Argyll and Bute Council noted that the use of drive times, rather than distances, was to be welcomed in the Geographic and Telecommunications Access Domain of the Scottish index of Multiple Deprivation. Nevertheless it was felt by Argyll and Bute Council that insufficient account was taken of travel times that include ferry crossings, and also for people who have no access to a car. A further issue is the inclusion of access to higher level services such as hospitals, which can significantly disadvantage residents in rural and remote rural areas. Access for specialist support for homeless people who live on islands is often only available on the mainland. As one respondent to the telephone interviews noted, the same issue can also be true for access to hospitals, with individuals inevitably cut right away from family or social networks at a point when they are highly vulnerable. Research on the profile of funding in rural and urban areas by the New Opportunities Fund identified a number of criteria against which to test programme delivery models, including, amongst others:

G minimum cost thresholds to deliver new services, including sparsity costs;

G the dispersal and distribution of small numbers of people in need;

G flexible targets that do not require concentrations of beneficiaries;

G joined up working and links with other funding opportunities. In relation to the latter point, one example of a dedicated source of funding to address the housing challenges facing rural America is administered by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA rural program is often combined with generic sources of housing funding, administered by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to provide funding to cover the costs of providing a service in rural areas. A couple of respondents to the telephone survey noted that provision of the capital element of a new support service should theoretically be aided by the fact that they were debt free authorities. However, it was stressed that there were difficulties in relation to infrastructure constraints, especially water, although there have been recent developments at both national and local levels to tackle this issue. Further, revenue costs in terms of sustaining a support service could prove in some circumstances to be the most prohibitive element in trying to develop a new service.

11 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

A related issue was a concern by some respondents over the use of Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), and the implications of using this index for funding services for homeless people in rural areas. For example, it was noted that 20 per cent of the funding formula for Supporting People used SIMD as a proxy for housing support needs of particular client groups (The Highland Council, 2005). One issue for rural areas is the close proximity of affluence and deprivation, reflected in a tendency ‘for urban datazones to be more homogenous, and hence more polarised in their socio-economic characteristics, than rural ones’ (Bramley, 2005, p19). The Highland Council, in their submission to the Finance Committee Deprivation Inquiry noted that 90 per cent of the income deprived and employment deprived population of the Highlands (as defined by the SIMD) was found outside the areas of concentrated deprivation (those datazones within the 15 per cent most deprived in Scotland). The review of the SIMD for the Finance Committee Deprivation Inquiry by Bramley (2005) highlighted that whilst the SIMD was a valuable way of targeting initiatives and funding where deprivation was concentrated on an area basis, a key recommendation was that policy monitoring could be enhanced through the use of ‘individual’ indicators, rather than through the use of area-based measures, which was also noted by Bailey et al (2003). Further information and updates on measuring deprivation can be found at: www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/scotstat/snsgroup/IndexDeprivation

One further issue was the way that services were monitored, reviewed and evaluated needed to reflect long term outcomes. Effective reviewing and monitoring of services needs to be designed in from the start of a project, and seen as a key mechanism for driving service improvements, rather than just a dry, statistics gathering exercise. One point to emerge from discussions with practitioners was that joint working between funders could lead to the development of a uniform, single set of indicators to ease the burden on projects for multiple reporting and recording of information. The Welsh Assembly Government (2004) has set out a number of good practice principles in the monitoring and evaluation of homelessness prevention interventions, including a suggestion for collaborative working between practitioner bodies providing similar services to develop evaluation methods, which could be used to assess different interventions and allow comparisons to be made about the relative effectiveness and merits of specific interventions. A key element of evaluations is that the should cover long term outcomes for service users, as well as clearly setting out an assessment of the costs of establishing and running a project. There may be a concern that a comparison of costs between different projects may reflect poorly on more expensive services, which is why costs need to be assessed in the context of the quality of the outcomes a service can provide. The Welsh Assembly Government (2004) also highlighted some examples of evaluations of homelessness services in practice both in the UK and internationally.

For example, an evaluation of Virginia’s Homeless Intervention Programme used a variety of methods to assess the effectiveness of this programme, with an intensive focus on tracking the experiences of households who used the service (Johnson and Hambrick, 1993).

What levels or types of support can be realistically be offered within rural and remote communities? A principal consideration for community planners is the extent to which homelessness support services can feasibly be developed and delivered within rural communities themselves, and how far such services will be delivered from

12 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support larger, urban settlements. One issue in rural areas is that the number of households or individuals requiring housing support or homelessness services in any single community or area is likely to be low.

Further, that such needs in any single community are likely to be intermittent, without there necessarily being a constant demand for services. One aspect of support therefore is services that can be called upon as and when the need arises, or support for homeless people that can be offered as one component of an existing service.

Such support might include:

G advice and information

G coordinating services

G supporting staff

G developing and maintaining a physical presence for services in rural areas

G working with local communities

G developing and maintaining social networks and relationships through befriending, mentoring, and mediation

G accommodation with in-house support

G support provided to those people with their own tenancy

G accommodation within the privately rented sector such as rural nightstop/supported lodgings/rent deposit schemes

G support to develop independent living skills.

One issue highlighted by a couple of respondents was the imperative in rural and remote areas to enable households sustain their accommodation, since there are often so few, or no, other accommodation alternatives for them in these areas. Once accommodation has been lost, then it is likely that households will have to move some considerable distance. Therefore, one dominant aspect of providing support for people in rural and remote areas was the essential focus upon maintaining support for as long as people need it, as a preventive measure to enable people to sustain their tenancies.

Accommodation

Streich et al (2002) pointed out that non-hostel based emergency services should be considered as a preferred model for meeting emergency need in remote rural areas. Indeed, Ransley (1995) noted that it is unlikely to be possible or desirable to provide urban models of direct access provision in rural settings.

Instead, a possible model is for a rural nightstop scheme, where trained and approved local people make a room available within their home as needed on a rota basis. Nightstop Plus is an example of a sub-regional project in a rural area of England to provide short term accommodation for young homeless people in homes of approved and trained volunteers. The project allows a short term solution during which local authorities can assess a young person’s needs and arrange mediation where a return to the family home is possible, or provide advice on securing alternative accommodation. The project is funded by the ODPM Homeless Innovation Fund, and is managed by the YMCA in

13 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

partnership with Broadland District Council, South Norfolk District Council, Nightstop UK, and the Norfolk Family Mediation Service. A respondent to the telephone survey suggested that Nightstop offered a model of support that could be applied both in urban and rural areas and prevented homeless people from becoming detached from support and communication networks while they are being assessed. In Scotland there is currently an example of a Nightstop scheme, which is provided by South Lanarkshire Council. A new Nightstop service is also in development in South Ayrshire.

Supported lodgings also offer a flexible option for provision in rural areas. Button (1992) highlighted an example of a service operating in Suffolk and Norfolk – the Campaign for Single Housing. Such accommodation could be combined with small direct access hostel based in towns. One example of a small scale direct access hostel in Scotland is SOLAS, based in Oban, Argyll and Bute, which was established with Rough Sleepers Initiative funding.

Another option is to utilise the potential offered by ‘Homeless at Home’ schemes, whereby people live with family or friends on a temporary basis, rather than using accommodation that has been found by a local authority. This approach has particular appeal in rural areas since it builds on a feature of homelessness in rural areas since people experiencing homelessness are more likely to be staying with family or friends (Robinson and Coward, 2003). It also means that people can remain close to social support networks rather than having to move considerable distances to access temporary accommodation provided by local authorities or housing associations. For example, Shelter Scotland (2005b) noted that Fife Council have found that nearly 40 to 50 per cent of all its homeless applicants stay with family or friends while their cases were being assessed, and that ‘homeless at home’ applications were most common in the rural areas of this authority.

An alternative approach has been to use rent deposit schemes as a way of assisting access into the private rented sector. Since the early 1990s, some areas have put schemes in place that offer, instead of a deposit, a guarantee that if eventualities such as damage, theft or rent arrears occur, then the landlord or letting agent would be recompensed up to an agreed level. In addition, deposit guarantee schemes have often offered help with finding a property and have provided ongoing support once a tenancy started. Encouragement to set up these schemes, as a valuable preventive measure against homelessness, was given as part of the Rough Sleeper Initiative. Indeed, in 2002 the Homelessness Task Force recommended that all local authorities should provide access to such schemes by 2004.

One problem in accessing accommodation in the private sector is being able to compete with other demands for such accommodation, which may include the income that may be derived from holiday letting in areas of high amenity. A couple of local authorities highlighted not only demand pressures on the private rented sector within many rural localities, but also reductions in supply in some rural communities as a number of private landlords have recently ceased letting. Nevertheless, one respondent to the telephone survey highlighted the diversity of rural housing markets by noting that there were some rural areas within their authority where demand on the private rented sector was much weaker, and where there was greater potential for working in partnership with private landlords.

A further difficulty was the nature of private letting in rural areas, which tends to follow more informal arrangements. Rugg (2003) found that letting may be of

14 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support single, previously tied, properties on estates, and lets were more likely to go to people known to the landlord or the estate manager. In addition, the letting process tended to be hidden through the use of solicitors, rather than letting agents. Rugg (2003) highlighted that this problem was particularly acute in Shetland, where a local authority reported that attempts to get a rent deposit scheme up and running had been stymied by the informal nature of the local market. Lets were arranged through word of mouth, and landlords tended not to use formal tenancy agreements. In Aberdeenshire, it was reported that in very small communities, attempting to find properties for given individuals could be difficult, since they may be known locally as having problems: the process had no protective anonymity for the client. Similarly, Rugg and Rhodes (2004) found that although the Lead Tenancy Scheme offered the flexibility to target particular properties that might have strategic importance in small communities, residents might identify a targeted property as a property for the ‘homeless’. A lead organisation (usually an RSL) leases properties from a private landlord for a set period, in order to make that property available to a particular group, and to some degree guaranteeing a rent payment to the property owner. The Lead Tenancy Scheme arose from a policy context that combined two principal housing concerns for Scotland: the existence of derelict properties that once renovated could constitute a valuable addition to housing stock in a particular location; and housing shortages experienced particularly by single, non- statutorily homeless households seeking property to rent.

Rugg (2003) also found that landlords and agents and tenants judged continued support after the tenancy had started from the lead organisation as a valuable service. The ongoing involvement of the scheme in the tenancy offered the landlord or agent the security that problems with the tenancy would be identified promptly; tenants also valued the opportunity to tell the scheme if any difficulties had arisen. There were a number of instances reported where scheme intervention on a particular issue prevented the early end of a tenancy.

In areas with high demand for private rented accommodation, Streich et al (2002) identified one option of helping to facilitate access into the private rented sector as providing significant financial and advisory support to landlords as incentives. One solution highlighted by Streich et al (2002) was a Rent Up Front (RUF) scheme, run by the Coastal Housing Action Group in Suffolk. This scheme pays landlords six months rent in advance when they let to homeless people who are in receipt of housing benefit. The housing benefit is then repaid to the organisation, which recycles the money to arrange further private tenancies.

Another option is to use council stock on a temporary basis. Fitzpatrick et al (2004) noted that Highland council have made use of their own stock to provide temporary accommodation for homeless households. However, one cost of using council housing in this way is that the total stock available for permanent rehousing is necessarily depleted. One respondent to the telephone survey noted that their authority had a policy of making some units of their own stock available in rural locations, even though using accommodation in this way necessarily led to increased void rates that reflected poorly in monitoring.

Research by Fitzpatrick et al (2004) found that the duration of stay in temporary accommodation in Scotland was quite short. However, there were a couple of more rural authorities such as Shetland and the Orkneys, which found it more difficult to secure permanent accommodation, even though the number of homeless families assisted was quite low. It was felt that this situation might reflect high housing stress, with low availability of permanent

15 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

affordable housing in these rural areas. It was also found that rates of temporary accommodation use can be high. Fitzpatrick et al (2004) also noted that a feature of problems in rural areas were the large distances that families had to move in order to acquire temporary accommodation, with moves of up to 40 to 50 miles not uncommon. Transport difficulties could compound spatial and social isolation.

Beer et al (2005) concluded that foyers offered a potentially attractive model for meeting the needs of young homeless people in rural areas. Foyers aim to provide accommodation for young people where they can get help with finding employment, training or education, including training in life skills and independent living skills. Foyers also aim to provide help for young people in finding permanent accommodation and ongoing support when they leave the foyer (see www.foyer.net for more information). However, Strachan et al (2000) noted a number of limitations of foyers in the context of tackling homeless in rural areas of Scotland. Not least, the report by Strachan et al (2000) suggested that the high costs of establishing and running foyers meant that local authorities might consider meeting the housing, personal and employment support needs of young people by using other approaches. Nevertheless, a number of foyers have been developed in rural areas within the UK, including the development of a dispersed foyer by Western Isles Council. Smith (2004) evaluated dispersed foyers compared with single site foyers and floating support schemes. The research by Smith (2004) identified the strengths and limitations of these three forms of provision (which included schemes in both urban and rural locations):

G Single site foyers provided the greatest degree of security, the most frequent contact with staff and the most consistent companionship and peer support. They are most likely to offer facilities for the local community, and usually offer a wider range of learning options for their residents. However, they have to tailor their regime to a particular set of support needs, and they do not fully prepare young people to manage on their own, because of the high degree of supervision that they offer.

G Dispersed foyers allow young people to remain close to their community, and also help them to develop skills that they will need when they are living independently. They may allow the support provider to tailor support packages in different sites to different sets of needs. Dispersed foyers can also be less obtrusive than single site foyers.

G Floating support offers greater flexibility and staff can provide very intensive support to people who would be accepted in a communal setting, as well as light support if that is all that is required. Since there is no service change, the benefit trap that residents face in getting into work is less severe. However, young people can feel lonely and vulnerable, and much of the support that is provided may be taken up with managing accommodation. In many cases the floating support does not offer any particular support on training and employment (Smith, 2004, p11-12).

Whilst floating support would appear to offer the greatest potential for rural areas, Smith (2004) highlighted limitations with this approach. One rural scheme had originally adopted a dispersed model, with staffing based on floating support. However, this approach was found not to work because staff found that considerable time could be spent simply travelling between residents. Instead, a staffing model was adopted where there was a staff member in each village where there was foyer accommodation. This model,

16 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Housing, Employment and Rural Training (HEART), in Norfolk and Suffolk had ten schemes where key working was based in shared accommodation, with one central office.

Accessing advice and information A recurring theme in the literature on rural homelessness is poor access to advice and information (e.g. Ransley, 1995). One issue is the need to ensure that the opening times of centralised services coincide with public transport timetables (Streich et al, 2002). Furthermore, it has been suggested that, in rural areas of England at least, that the kinds of homelessness where good advice can make a significant impact, such as mortgage arrears and the loss of tied and private rented accommodation, are more prevalent in rural areas (Everitt, 1995). Nevertheless, there are recent examples of approaches to providing information in rural areas, through the use of directories and also the internet: The Northern Ireland Housing Executive has produced a handbook for homeless people in the rural areas of Ballymena (March 2005). The handbook provides practical information and advice, including sample questions and answers about homelessness, some case studies and a comprehensive directory of where and how help can be sought. The handbook ‘No Place of Your Own’ was produced after consultation with other service providers and with valuable help from those who have experienced homelessness. The Ballymena District Office has distributed this handbook to outlets in the rural communities of the Borough, for example, in Health Centres, Community Centres and libraries. Streetwise – Highland Council - is a web based directory of services which gives useful information to anyone who is homeless or at risk of becoming homeless and also to anyone giving advice to homeless or potentially homeless people. It describes all the different housing, support, health, advice etc. services that are available in the Highlands and gives information on accessing them. It is also available as a paper directory at Highland Council Service Points and Area Housing Offices and also at Advice Agencies in the Highlands. It can be found at www.streetwise-highland.org. However, it should be noted that the provision of paper based directories can prove costly. Two other contrasting approaches are highlighted below. The first example is of a mobile service which provides information in rural communities. The second provided information from a single access point on Mull, with a freephone service. The Grampian Mobile Information Bus provides health and related information to young people aged 12-18 who live in the rural areas of North-East Scotland. An evaluation of the service showed that over a six month period 1180 young people visited the bus and that they reported a high level of satisfaction. Young people sought information on sexual health, smoking, alcohol, drugs, housing, careers, benefits and recreation. The main barriers to use were in relation to embarrassment at being seen to use the bus and lack of transport to access the bus (Douglas et al, 2002). Although the service on Mull is no longer running, it provides an example of meeting a need based on an assessment of the characteristics of the local context and the decision making of local stakeholders, and so has been included here as an illustration of this type of approach. The initial idea of providing an information service for Mull and Iona was the subject of research which set out a range of options for these islands.

17 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

An Information Service provided advice, information and assistance on Mull and Iona (although it is no longer operational). The service specialised in housing advice, and worked closely with the local council, housing association Citizens Advice Bureau and Shelter. The service aimed to provide impartial advice to help prevent local people becoming homeless, and to help them improve their standard of living. A freephone helpline was also available. It was funded by Argyll and Bute Council, and also had a website providing information on getting and keeping somewhere to live, that was funded by HomePoint.

Support in schools Schools have been highlighted as an important location for tackling potential homelessness among young people, both in the UK and abroad. However, Grigor (2002) noted that young people may not necessarily respond to initiatives within a school setting, preferring alternative ‘real’ locations.

There are two elements to a preventative approach. Firstly, a generic approach aiming to raise awareness of housing issues. Secondly, a targeted approach identifying young people at risk of becoming homeless in the future. A further issue is the extent to which schools can provide a location for meeting the needs of children who have already experienced homelessness.

Chamberlain and McKenzie (1998) highlighted a programme of early intervention and prevention in schools in Australia. The research noted that in Australia most young people had their first experience of homelessness whilst they were still at school. The research concluded that it was much easier to support people if they were still at school and remained within their local community. The model calls for a strong pastoral role for the school, with well trained counsellors and strong links between schools and welfare services that are available within the wider community, although these are largely the same resources that are required to address drug and alcohol abuse, youth suicide and early school leaving. However, the report also noted that the model of schools as a location where they can access a range of services was best suited to high-density cities where most people are close to the service delivery point. Instead, the report advocates intensive networking between clusters of schools and agencies, which have the capacity to coordinate services, with links into:

G A networked youth issues forum;

G Mentoring programme;

G Independent living skills group;

G A key message here is that a mix of approaches can be used with a strong emphasis on integration between the variety of providers who may either deliver services within schools or build links with external agencies who offer services to young people. One view by a service provider was that it was helpful for homelessness staff to deliver sessions within schools, partly to raise awareness of the issues that young people can face when they leave school, but it also provides an opportunity for staff and agencies to become known to young people, especially more vulnerable people, so that they may be more comfortable about making use of services later, if they need it. Coordinated services can also lead to a more seamless service between educational resources in relation to housing, and learning opportunities in ‘real life’ settings which are provided by external agencies. Awareness

18 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

of homeless issues is crucial for frontline staff in educational settings as well such as teachers, administrators and nurses. Vissing (1999) stressed that it is important for staff to know where to turn for help, and that local resources are readily available for those in a position to help or refer young people who experience homelessness.

Coordinating support services One theme running through a range of reports, both UK based and international, is the notion of providing a ‘continuum of care’ for homeless services (McNaughton, 2005), which also includes rural areas (Singleton et al, 2002). However, in rural areas there are likely to be gaps in services, but a key element in this approach is the effective coordination of services to maximise the potential contribution that providers can make in any one area, and to make most effective use of the services and agencies that do exist.

This approach also means building up the capacity of existing services on the ground, rather than necessarily starting up new services from scratch. For example, one respondent noted that providing a service in a large, sparsely populated area may require the development of a model of support where voluntary agencies and community groups are given support to help homeless people, rather than trying to deliver a direct service themselves. In the USA, Singleton et al (2002) identify four aspirational themes underpinning the development of a comprehensive homeless planning ‘system’ for rural areas:

Inclusive process Planning should be as inclusive as possible, drawing in a wide a range of participants as possible, including statutory and voluntary agencies, as well as community representatives. One State was looking to bring business representatives into the process. The scale of any network depends on each rural area.

Support networks The report advocates a culture of mutual support that is not based on ‘turfism’ and competition. Organisations must be willing to support and facilitate other agencies’ applications for funds. Grigor (2002) also noted that many services in Highland rely on short term funding, which creates a climate of competition, undermining the collaborative ethos needed to deliver seamless access to person centred services.

Planning Planning was viewed as a long term process, rather than focusing on identifying short term funding streams. In this context, planning related not only taking a more strategic approach to identifying the services that might be provided, but also the analysis of gaps in services.

Leadership A homeless planning system required the commitment of a lead organisation that was willing to dedicate sufficient staff support. The lead role could be played by a variety of agencies in different States, including community based organisations, and also a statewide advocate.

A key element of co-ordinating a response to the support needs of households in rural and remote areas is to use reciprocal arrangements where agencies have clear strategies and protocols in place for dealing with referrals, signposting and establishing a clear understanding of each other roles and

19 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

identifiable boundaries between the services that agencies will provide. Having reciprocal agreements between agencies in place may mean that staff are expected to have an awareness and understanding of issues outside their strict professional remit or training. This is not to say that staff are expected to take responsibility for issues outside their job specification, but that they are in a position to refer on, or signpost, as necessary and appropriate to other agencies. For example, health staff may have a role in recognising issues that may lead to homelessness and refer people to housing support services. Housing staff may have a role in picking up on drug and/or alcohol issues and referring people to Drug and Alcohol Action Teams. The aim would be for a range of frontline agencies that deliver services in rural and remote areas to act as ‘triggers’ for households who may have diverse vulnerabilities and who thus have a variety of routes in to different types of support. One example of effective partnership working between health and housing is in Perth, Scotland, where a nurse led practice provides help for homeless people, and can act as a means of accessing other services for homeless people in that area in both the voluntary and statutory sectors.

Another instance is the use of the ‘Care Programme Approach’, noted by another respondent, by housing staff, to help households in arrears by involving other agencies where appropriate to help households to maintain their tenancies.

Managing conflicting priorities between partner agencies Another aspect of joint working relates to the extent to which inter – departmental local authority strategies dovetail effectively, or have conflicting objectives. One respondent highlighted that an area where there were clashing priorities was over the council’s commitment to reduce homelessness and provide best value homeless services as against their (and the government’s) priority to reduce fraud, through the use of the verification framework and improve on performance targets. A difficulty arises here because people who find themselves in a homeless situation and are placed in temporary accommodation are often unable to provide proof of identity within the timescales set by the Council or during their stay, if this is for a very short period. A further tension was apparent over housing benefit, which may only cover about half the costs of Bed & Breakfast accommodation unless it is a contracted service (this form of accommodation often being the only available solution for resolving homelessness on a temporary basis in many rural areas). Housing benefit was also raised as a concern in relation to utilising employment as a route out of homelessness (Wooley and McNaughton, 2005). However, the Scottish Executive (2006) have highlighted a two year pilot project in three London boroughs that aims to combine measures to tackle the benefits trap created by high rents with targeted assistance to households in temporary accommodation to overcome other barriers to employment (see www.workingfuture.org.uk).

Supporting staff Shelter Scotland (2004) noted the difficulties that providers face in recruiting staff for housing support services in rural areas. One issue relates to the salaries that can be offered in rural areas compared with some major urban centres. Another factor is that people tend to stay in the area where they studied or trained, resulting in an inclination for staff to remain in urban areas, and for very few working and living in rural areas (Shelter Scotland, 2005a). Another disincentive for potential employees to make a move into some rural areas is the lack of affordable housing. The pool of skills on which services can

20 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support draw when they advertise for jobs can also be very limited, particularly in remote areas. One respondent noted that their organisation had recognised these difficulties by budgeting for an enhanced training and induction programme for employees.

Another challenge for services is addressing worker isolation and low morale, associated with difficulties with having trained specialists to support and supervise staff, and where managers may be a considerable distance from their staff. A further problem is where small staff teams may have to cover large rural areas, and also provide cover for holidays or sickness or longer term cover if posts remain unfilled for longer periods of time (Effective Interventions Unit, 2004). Staff safety is also an issue, in situations where staff may have to make lone visits to people in remote areas.

Developing a model of support for rural or remote areas has implications for the structures of support for staff. One factor is providing training tailored to a context where staff may be expected to adopt a wide range of skills and areas of knowledge in order to meet the requirements for providing a generic service. A further issue is providing a supportive network for exchanging information and building links with other agencies.

Nevertheless, maintaining networks or forums does present particular challenges in rural and remote areas. Research has noted that in the context of providing integrated care for drug users in rural areas, agencies were confident of developing maintaining good local networks, but they noted the practical difficulties in relation to the time and distances involved in achieving face to face contact with other service providers, such a multi-agency case conferences, as well as difficulties in attending national networking events, especially those held in the central belt (Effective Interventions Unit, 2004). Grigor (2002) has also highlighted the value of training that can be provided on a local basis, rather than stretching services by requiring extensive travel to access training. One advantage of operating in rural areas is that the number of agencies in many rural areas is smaller than in urban areas, and it is easier to develop close working relationships. Certainly a couple of respondents in the telephone interviews and also in the workshop noted rural areas where close working relations between agencies were evident.

Developing and maintaining a physical presence for services in rural areas One option for support in relation to maintaining or enhancing their physical presence in rural and remote areas is through sharing buildings with other agencies. Moseley et al (2004) identified four types of multi-service outlet, including community resource centres, small retail outlets, health care complexes, and multi-purpose vehicles. Research has highlighted a number of advantages for services that result from sharing multi-service outlets:

G Cost saving or sharing

G Increased clientele

G Synergy (where service providers gain operational benefits from working in close proximity such as health and social care professionals working alongside one another)

G Flexibility

G Public relations and community awareness (Moseley et al, 2004; Harrop and Palmer, 2000).

21 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Previous research has noted the value of co-locating services as one strategy for minimising the effects of remoteness, and has identified examples of local arrangements for access to premises held by a wide range of agencies (Effective Interventions Unit, 2004). Nevertheless, there are a number of limitations as well. The work by the Effective Interventions Unit (2004) also suggested that the potential for co-locating services may only be feasible on a small scale. It may also be difficult to ensure confidentiality in some premises, and there may also be issues where some people do not want to be seen by one of the agencies using the shared facility. A related point was highlighted by service providers in the workshop discussion in that services provided by homeless agencies may sit uneasily with other types of service provision in a multi-service centre: a service for homeless people may not be very welcome in some communities. Nevertheless, Post (2002) has noted one example of a multi service centre in the USA, which is the Homeless HealthCare program in Burlington, Vermont. Here, all mental health, substance misuse, case management and primary care services are coordinated at a single point of access.

Further, there is a balance to be struck between providing a physical presence in rural areas, and ensuring that a service centre can meet needs of a wide catchment area. Multi-service outlets need to be accessible for public transport, which suggests small urban centres, rather than in outlying rural communities, otherwise the outlet will be inaccessible for any households who live outside the community in which the outlet is based.

Berry (2005) noted that different types of co-location have different implications for service users. For example, serial co-location, where a single room is used by different agencies at different times, may not be that helpful for service users as they will not be able to access different services at the same time. Instead, parallel co-location, where different agencies use different spaces at the same time, is viewed as a better model for service users, although it should not be assumed that the services are integrated to any great extent. An issue in rural communities is that space in available buildings may be very limited, and that opportunities for the development of multi-service outlets likely to decline further, given the continuation of the trend towards fewer and fewer outlets from which to deliver services.

There has also been the suggestion that there needs to be shift away from a sole focus on the location of the delivery of services, which tends to be viewed from the perspective of service providers, in favour of an alternative consideration of the integrated needs of service users (Berry, 2005). Whilst there will be a requirement for physical locations from which to deliver physical element of various services, which should be co-located in multi-service outlets, expert and information functions can be delivered remotely, using Information and Communications Technology.

The Scottish National Rural Partnership (SNRP) (2000) have highlighted examples of joint use of resources such as sharing premises, sharing staff (where staff already based in rural areas take on agency services), and building on existing networks where there are agency arrangements between service providers. The SNRP (2000) also noted the potential of remote provision, including public sector websites that bring together a range of providers to offer a variety of services (with Fife-Direct cited as an example of a computer network that allows people to access information services and training from within their own communities). One example for the future has been highlighted by the Effective Interventions Unit (2004) is WIRED, which

22 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support has planned to develop a service to support the uptake and development of virtual treatment, care and support for people to tackle substance misuse in rural areas of Scotland. WIRED was developed to help empower people to deal with substance misuse by using web-based communications to disseminate information, provide support and increase the capacity of existing programmes to reach their audience.

Further evidence as to the efficacy of co-location will become available when current research for the Scottish Executive is published, which is examining the costs and benefits of co-locating services in rural Scotland. This project is undertaking a costs-benefits analysis of co-location to assess how far the co- location of services in rural areas leads to costs savings and improved access. The intention of the project is to identify feasible co-location models. Another example of an evaluation of the development of shared premises was provided by OPM (2003) in their report on the Dalmellington Area Centre, East Ayrshire.

Working with local communities Research has identified that one of the challenges facing homeless people and agencies seeking to address this problem in rural areas is a lack of awareness and acceptance of homelessness in rural areas by the wider community (Cloke et al, 2000), which may extend to include local agencies as well (Oldman, 2002). Ransley (1995) highlighted that key local bodies such as parish councils may not recognise that homelessness is a problem within their communities. Similarly in Scotland, Grigor (2002) noted that few community councils responded to a survey on homelessness in Highland, as it appeared that few had any interest in this issue. Further, Streich et al (2002) pointed out that there may be difficulties both in identifying needs, but also in resistance to the development of services to meet the needs of homeless people. However, one scheme reported that it was worth persisting in working with communities to turn around attitudes towards homeless people, which could result in the development of practical local solutions within communities (Macklin, 1995).

International perspectives on addressing homelessness in rural areas have also emphasised the role of engaging communities. In the USA, Vissing (1996) highlighted the role of communities in taking responsibility for developing a response to rural homelessness in the USA, including working with communities where NIMBY attitudes may be prevalent. Further, Beer et al (2005) put forward an argument for the inclusion of the community as part of the way forward in tackling youth homelessness in rural areas of Australia.

Certainly, one way of achieving help for homeless people in rural areas through the provision of support is through raising the profile of homelessness in rural areas. This approach could help to:

G Identify needs;

G Lobby for resources, and

G Encourage the development of local, community based solutions.

Awareness raising could form part of the role of Rural Housing Enablers and agencies conducting housing needs surveys in rural communities. For example, one project in Berkshire worked with parish councils, to raise awareness of homelessness.

A further issue is the way that homeless households may be perceived by the broader community. Any negative perceptions of homeless people may lead to

23 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

anxieties within communities where homeless households are housed in permanent or temporary accommodation, such as holiday lets out of season or second homes. In particular, in remote rural areas where the population is very sparse, homeless households may be highly visible. This issue raises the question of how far agencies work with communities to bring residents on board.

Part of raising awareness of support services is to try and overcome the stigma that some people may feel in relation to asking for help. One factor here is labelling someone as ‘homeless’, as part of the process of accessing support services. A further consideration is that people may not perceive that they are in a ‘homeless’ situation and therefore are not eligible for support, even though they may well fall well within the remit of the preventative role of support that agencies can provide.

Social networks Stenhouse (2005a) highlighted the range of research that underpins the significant role that positive social networks can play in helping people to address homelessness, including resettlement. The development of positive social networks are one element of support that local authorities need to consider as part of their homelessness strategies. Further, one of the difficulties in rural areas is that households may have to take up accommodation options some considerable distance from their social contacts. Therefore, there may also be a role for befriending in these situations.

Stenhouse (2005b) reviewed the issues that arose from a series of five seminars that took place around Scotland in 2005 that aimed to look at the national issues around developing social networks and to contribute to local solutions that enable people affected by homeless ness to develop positive social networks. One issue noted that there was a role for linking together the wide range of services that already exist which could support people affected by homelessness. There was also an opportunity to build on the services that already exist even where the core role of such services may not be the development of social networks or supporting people affected by homelessness. One example from research by Quilgars et al, (2004) from an evaluation of the Safe Moves project was the extension of an existing mediation service into new support for young people.

One option might be the development of a network of befrienders within rural communities, with training and support to befrienders offered by dedicated coordinators. A further role for coordinators might be to keep befrienders incentivised and motivated in localities where they may not necessarily be called upon on a frequent or regular basis. However, it would also be important to be able to offer alternatives for people, such as an office based service operating from a central location, in case individuals were concerned about confidentiality or a perceived stigma of asking for help from people they may know. Pugh (2000) has highlighted the need for service providers to recognise the practical difference between providing anonymity and ensuring confidentiality, especially in regard to operating in small rural communities, and also the importance for workers to understand some of the reasons that make people reluctant to approach and use services with regard to confidentiality, shame and stigma. Further, Streich et al (2002) reported on a scheme in Cumbria to establish a network of local ‘Housing Ambassadors’, one of whose roles was to link people in need of housing advice and information into an online information service. However, it was concluded that the scheme was

24 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support only partially successful due to the limited promotion of the service, but also because of concerns about confidentiality. The Effective Interventions Unit (2004) also noted this issue in Scotland in relation to the greater likelihood of everyone knowing everyone else in rural and remote areas, as well as a smaller pool of people on which to draw as potential volunteers.

Another aspect of community involvement relates to the potential role of broader communities in helping homeless people, or people at risk of homelessness, to develop positive social networks (Stenhouse, 2005). For example, Streich et al (2002) highlight the LINKS volunteer scheme in Northumberland, which recruits, trains and offers ongoing support to a team of ‘Community befrienders’ who support young people in their own accommodation. The Shelter Single Homeless Person Support Service, based in Dumfries & Galloway, also provides an example of the kinds of role that volunteers in rural areas can engage in. These roles may include practical work such as helping people to move into new accommodation and settle into their new area, as well undertaking jobs such as DIY, painting and decorating. Other roles include befriending and offering moral support which may include help with shopping, paying the rent and bills, and visiting health services.

Delivering specialist support into rural areas

A challenge for addressing needs in rural areas is balancing the application of recommendations for specialist service provision within the constraints imposed by a rural context. One example of this challenge can be seen from a consideration of the findings by Fitzpatrick et al (2004) in relation to the support needs of homeless families in Scotland. This research concluded that there was clear evidence in favour of the value of specialist services for homeless families that require support, and that such services were extremely popular with service users. Such services did not have to work exclusively with homeless families, but they did have to be specifically tailored to meet the particular needs of homeless parents and children. The advantages that specialist services offer homeless families included:

G An intensity of intervention that mainstream services generally could not offer;

G A flexibility in the manner of service delivery that is difficult for mainstream services to emulate, and

G An understanding of the specific circumstances and difficulties facing homeless families.

A key finding was that homeless families lacked the confidence, motivation or skills to access mainstream services, even if it was appropriate for their needs, without some sort of specialist assistance to act as a bridge to these services. Further, the report noted that the provision of information about mainstream services, whilst important, was not sufficient. However, the research acknowledged the difficulty of developing specialist services within rural areas, and instead suggested an expansion in the use of floating support as a means of offering flexible specialist services. In particular, Fitzpatrick et al (2004) emphasised that much might be achieved without the commitment of massive resources given the apparent benefits that relatively low levels of support had for many families.

Grigor (2002) noted that the introduction of specialist providers offering support to a particular client group would not, on their own, provide an answer to the

25 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

range of needs identified in local areas, although specific service needs of client groups need to be identified strategically. An example of the latter situation is that a feature of homelessness in Highland has been an emphasis on family homelessness, although legislative changes have resulted in a jump in single homelessness applications (Fitzpatrick et al, 2004).

An example of floating support in Highland is the National Children’s Home (NCH) Lochaber Families Project. This project provides confidential support and assistance to young children aged 0-3 and their families. The project is funded through Surestart, with additional support to parents through Supporting People. The project also works with some parents whose children are over the Surestart age range through Supporting People.

Another example of delivering specialist support in rural areas is Women’s Aid. Research has highlighted that domestic abuse in rural areas can be differentiated from abuse in urban areas by the greater physical isolation experienced by abused women in rural areas and additional external factors that may affect their ability to seek help, including:

G Increased social and family pressures to stay within the marriage;

G Lack of information about what help is available;

G Lack of locally based services;

G The difficulty of contacting or visiting service providers;

G Lack of public transport;

G Lack of confidentiality;

G Increased risk to safety from high visibility in the community;

G Increased risk to safety from the lack of neighbours and delayed police response;

G Attachment to the area and way of life. (Mackay, (2000), p5).

Streich et al (2002) reported the development of an outreach service in rural areas of Devon, which was viewed as more cost effective than providing an accommodation service. The research by Grigor (2002) also set out the need for family sized accommodation within urban centres, since access to services and facilities is constrained by a lack of transport options in rural locations. Fiztpatrick et al (2003) noted that the most popular model of refuge amongst women, children and workers was for cluster refuges, containing single occupancy flats and communal facilities for women and children. There was reported widespread antipathy towards shared accommodation, particularly in relation to shared facilities such as bathrooms. This latter point was reiterated by Grigor (2002) who highlighted a preference amongst women for self- contained accommodation, ideally with sole use of kitchen and bathroom.

Recent research identified differences between rural and urban areas in terms of factors in relation to the provision of refuges or women (Fitzpatrick et al, 2003). The was concern in rural locations about the absence of local specialist services, such as mental health services, rape crisis services, abortion advice, and drug rehabilitation services. Access to mainstream social work was also reported as sometimes difficult. This absence of provision, coupled with poor public transport, meant that workers spent a great deal of time transporting

26 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support women to appointments with other agencies. On the other hand, Fitzpatrick et al (2003) found that Women’s Aid workers in urban areas faced greater challenges in creating a safe and supportive atmosphere in their refuges since complex additional problems, aside from the issue of domestic violence, tended to be far more prevalent in urban areas.

An evaluation of service delivery in rural areas of Fife identified that the use of outreach clinics was not a successful method of engaging with this client group (Mackay, 2002). Outreach clinics had been established in villages in East Fife. However, very little use was made of the clinics by potential users. Two key reasons were cited. Firstly, that the set day or time of the clinic did not suit people. Secondly, that women preferred the anonymity of an office in a nearby urban area, rather than risk being seen in a local office. The evaluation by Mackay (2002) also considered the use of outreach clinics by six other organisations as well, including Ross-shire Women’s Aid. This comparison identified that the use of clinics in rural areas tended not to work, although clinics run by Citizen’s Advice at least met with some mixed success (although further research would need to be conducted to isolate why this situation might be the case). Instead, the evaluation concluded that rural areas were better served by offering women the choice of an office based service in a central location, alongside an individual support service based in their home location.

Research both within the UK and internationally has highlighted the strong links between substance misuse and homelessness and the Substance Misuse Research Team has set out the context of tackling integrated care for drug users in rural and remote rural areas of Scotland (Effective Interventions Unit, 2004). Data from this research showed that there were lower levels of drug use in rural, compared with urban areas of Scotland. However, trends in drug use in rural areas gave cause for concern. Firstly, evidence showed that there was a narrowing of the gap in drug use between urban and rural areas on average. Secondly, levels of drug use varied between different rural localities. For example, significant increases in drug use have taken place in rural areas such as Dumfries and Galloway and South Ayrshire. Strachan et al (2000) also noted high levels of alcohol problems in Scottish Borders. A number of respondents to the telephone interviews stressed the necessity for effective joint working between partners in both preventing, but also sustaining solutions to tackle homelessness, with Drug and Alcohol Action Teams playing a significant role in this regard. Residential rehab that was more accessible to rural authorities was viewed as one option, especially for island authorities where such services are currently only available on the mainland. However, it is likely that this type of support would necessarily still be located within the main urban centres of these authorities. Instead, floating support offering specific support packages for people with addiction problems was also seen as an important step forwards for more remote rural areas.

Conclusion

This chapter has focused upon the challenges facing the delivery of support services for homeless people in rural areas. Research has identified a range of barriers that limit the types of intervention that can realistically be developed within the current funding framework. Nevertheless, there are a number of examples of approaches that can effectively tailor the delivery of support services to the rural context. A key element underpinning service delivery is the extent to which the individual needs of people who may become homeless can be tackled through effective joint working between agencies.

27 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Research has highlighted the important role that specialised services can play in addressing the support needs of households that are valued by service users. A key challenge is how such specialised delivery can be translated into services for rural localities. Although outreach work from a central hub can meet the needs of rural localities to a certain extent, there’s a limit in terms of the catchment area that can be effectively supported before travel costs and the distances that have to be covered make a service unviable. Realistically, some types of intensive support have to be delivered from a single point – often within urban areas- where specialised accommodation is based. However, there may be potential for some elements of specialised help to be provided across different client groups, and this approach may help to make some specialised services more accessible within rural localities, since they can cover a broader base of different types of household. For example, Fitzpatrick et al (2004) found that one aspect of specialised services valued by households was providing a keyworker role, linking families into a diverse range of services. A similar service to a broader base of clients might require specific training for staff working in rural based services, but a push for this type of model can also be noted in healthcare settings, with a call for rural specific generalist training and accreditation (Douglas, 2005).

28 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

3 Evaluating models of homelessness support services for rural and remote areas

Introduction

This chapter explores potential models of homelessness support services for rural and remote areas. The chapter presents a framework for evaluating potential models. In practice, the framework could be used to assess the extent to which potential models might be developed in rural and remote areas, highlighting issues that need to be overcome, elements of models that could be replicated or perhaps might need to be revised to reflect the circumstances that exist in particular localities. The chapter then sets out four approaches that are possible options for services and appraises the extent to which they could be applied in rural and remote areas.

In their study to develop models of good practice in meeting the needs of homeless young people in rural areas of Australia, Beer et al (2003) set out a range of different types of model of service delivery that could be applied in rural areas. These models included:

G Outreach models (support for people at risk of homelessness or identify people before they enter high risk categories);

G Intensive support models (support for people with complex or high needs, contributing to factors that minimise the risk of homelessness as well as providing accommodation);

G Co-ordination models (support to strengthen links between services and programs, providing an integrated response to people’s needs);

G Generic models (meeting the accommodation needs of a broad client population rather than the needs of specific sub-groups);

G Crisis models (reactive models that deal with acute and urgent needs rather than long term or underlying structural causes of homelessness).

In practice, an overarching model for the provision of support services in rural areas will include a combination of approaches. Grigor (2002) put forward an approach for addressing needs in Highland that combined support for the general support needs of different clients, with access to specialised services supported from an area hub. The model was based on:

G Strategic assessment of priority areas for the involvement of specialised support providers;

G Review of the capacity of local health and social work services to provide support to clients with particular needs in conjunction with housing support providers;

G A willingness on the part of these specialised services to commit to protocols with local support providers to ensure delivery of integrated packages of support, and to help resource, train and support local providers;

G Willingness on the part of generic providers of housing support to work in partnership with specialist services, including where appropriate

29 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

professional supervision of services provided to clients with complex needs;

G Clearly delineated lines of authority and responsibility.

The approach of providing generic support in rural and remote areas has been noted as a potential model for other forms of service provision, and not just in relation to meeting the needs of homelessness people. Indeed, the Effective Interventions Unit (2004) stated that one of the key influences on the range and capacity of services available to drug users in rural and remote areas was the extent to which generic services addressed drug misuse problems among their clients.

A possible model of response might include a peripatetic team with good 24 hour links to specialist support, as well as immediate or very short term emergency facilities in larger settlements, and a series of services sites in which temporary accommodation could be provide at 24/48 hour notice to try and minimise disruption to school/work/social links.

In the future, further models of service delivery in rural areas may become apparent from the DESERVE project (www.nppdeserve.info), which is due to be completed by summer 2007. This project is a collaboration between Scotland, Sweden, Iceland and Finland to test the transferability of models of service delivery to remote and rural areas. Each participating region will implement a project utilising a model previously tested by partners in their own countries. The emphasis is on the models of service delivery to remote and rural areas rather than on the specific services provided, so it may be hoped that lessons may be learnt which could be applied in the context of housing support, even if projects have not directly been involved in this type of service.

Developing a framework for evaluating models of homelessness support services for rural areas

Criteria for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of models of service delivery This section puts forward a framework for assessing potential models of homelessness support services for rural areas. The evaluation has three stages. The first stage provides a description of the service. The second stage assesses the implications of providing the service in a rural context. Thirdly, the evaluative framework assesses potential models against four indicators to examine to what extent to models are: viable; sustainable; effective and accessible. Where possible, the evaluation was informed with reference to existing evaluations of services within the literature.

Stage One: Description of service G What does the service aim to achieve? G What does the service do? G If the service already exists: G Where does the service operate? G Do evaluations of the service exist? G How is the service funded? G What is the client group (e.g. all homeless, or particular groups of homeless people, wider community)? G Is the service tailored exclusively for homeless people, or is it mainstreamed?

30 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Stage Two: Rural context An important element of the evaluation is the need to acknowledge the importance of the wider context in which a service may operate, factoring in issues such as the local housing market, and the availability of affordable housing choices both in terms of temporary provision and the availability of long term housing solutions. To this end, the following questions will help guide the evaluation, and allow a consideration of the service against circumstances that exist in diverse rural areas, including the wider contexts in which services will have to operate models which might work in some rural contexts may be entirely inappropriate in others.

G Can the service be delivered within individual small communities, or is it likely to be based in main settlements? If so, will this service include an element of outreach or floating support?

G How far would delivery be affected by the type of rural area;

G Areas defined as accessible rural, remote rural, or very remote rural (see Scottish Executive definition)?

G Strength of the local economy (such as fragile or regeneration areas);

G How far would local housing markets have an impact on delivery (pressured housing markets, constrained social rented stock, or lower demand areas). i.e. some good practice may be transferable from urban settings, but may have to operate in a very different context;

G How far would partnership working be required or is the service to be delivered by a single agency?

G How far does the model aim to identify and encourage clients to use the service?

Stage Three: summarising the service model The evaluative framework assesses potential models against four indicators to examine to what extent to models are: viable; sustainable; effective and accessible. This element of the evaluation is set out in table format (see example below).

Model Summary description viable strengths weaknesses sustainable strengths weaknesses effective strengths weaknesses accessible strengths weaknesses

31 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Viable G A key factor affecting the vision for addressing the homelessness support needs in rural and remote area is: how much will a functional service cost? In the context of this research, which drew upon evaluations of existing services, it was often not possible to provide costings that a service was likely to incur since these were based on the evaluations of services that exist in much of the literature. However, even in the absence of costings, it may be possible to provide some indication of the scale of a service and the nature of the catchment area required to achieve adequate numbers of clients.

Sustainable G Are the benefits of a model likely to be sustainable – and sustainable for whom? – First and foremost, for the person using the service in terms of outcomes and personal development attuned to their individual needs; – For the service provider, in terms of developing and maintaining the service;

G What are the opportunities for long-term funding?

G How far do the indicators used to monitor and assess projects address the extent to which models offer the opportunity to sustain long-term outcomes for homeless people? (i.e. the cheapest options for services may not offer the best solutions in the long run);

G What would be required to achieve sustainability? (for example, staff training, networking);

G What are the risks inherent in the model? Are there risks that are outside the control of service providers? How far can risks be minimised?

G Will the service aim to tackle short term, emergency interventions, or how far does the service have the capacity to help to achieve long term outcomes for homeless people?

G Does the service include the views of homeless people in its development and ongoing monitoring?

Accessible G How far does the model meet the requirements of the people who will need the service?

G Physical access to the service/reliance on transport networks for clients; remote access via telephone or online;

G Access in terms of awareness by service users and also awareness by other practitioners who can link into the service;

32 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

G Access which can ensure the anonymity and confidentiality of service users;

G Access to choices that suit the individual needs of the service user.

Potential models of homelessness support services in rural areas

This section presents four potential models:

G Early intervention

G Dispersed

G Enhanced access

G Capacity development.

Table 1: Summary of four potential support service models for rural and remote areas

MODEL AIM APPROPRIATE WHERE…

Early intervention To address in a focussed way the needs of Authorities with smaller particular households where it is felt that homelessness caseloads, there is a risk that chronic homelessness where a tradition of full and will become an issue. Work rests on the detailed caseworking in a proactive recognition of households where context of multi-agency work there are early indications that housing has led to a good level of problems may become chronic (ie understanding of the multiple households with anti-social behaviour causes of homelessness. issues; where rental arrears have been evident; where there have been instances of domestic violence, etc). Dispersed To ensure the delivery of appropriate Authorities have good levels of services outwith the larger settlement areas service development in the of a local authority and so keep households larger settlement, and where in the locations in which they may have ‘outreach’ services/floating informal support networks. support may be grafted on to a strong central management and service core. Enhanced access To ensure that information about services is A good level of service delivery available to individuals and communities has been developed, but that might otherwise remain outwith where a lack of information mainstream provision. This approach draws may leave households in all agencies to ensure that front-line staff unaware of available support. in health, housing and welfare are thoroughly aware of the breadth of service available to households in need. Capacity To develop the capacity of communities to There are authorities with development support households in need of housing extremely dispersed assistance. For example, adopting a populations, and where need is ‘nightstop’ model, volunteers would be likely to arise intermittently but trained in order to offer essential advice urgently. and in some cases offer temporary housing for households facing difficulties. Volunteers offering practical and emotional support through befriending and/or handyperson services could also give an accommodation sustainment role.

33 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

1. Early intervention

Description of service This model seeks to address in a focussed way the needs of particular households where there are early indications that housing problems may become chronic. A model of early intervention could be used to meet the needs of a range of households, depending on the particular configuration of needs identified by local authorities and other agencies within any given rural and remote area. However, the example given here, Safe Moves, relates to preventing homelessness amongst young people aged 13-18.

Safe Moves was a preventative model to assist young people who are at risk of homelessness. An evaluation suggested that the development of a core and cluster model would be most effective, offering three key services, but supplementing this approach with other types of support (Quilgars et al, 2004).

Safe Moves was an 18 month pilot project (Oct 02 to March 04) developed by the Foyer Federation and Connexions in four local authority areas in England (Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and two rural authorities: Ryedale and Suffolk Coastal). The initiative aimed to test a model for preventing homelessness for young people aged between 13 – 19. The model envisaged that a coordinator would develop and broker three sets of services, which involved the development of a package of services to young people, and where appropriate, their families, including:

G life skills training;

G family/inter-generational mediation and support;

G peer mentoring.

Also, appropriate support to move into supported or independent accommodation, could be provided where needed.

The initiative was evaluated by the Centre for Housing Policy, University of York (Quilgars, et al 2004).

The local foyer was the lead agency in three areas, whilst the forth was located within a detached youth work agency. Following staffing problems at one foyer, the lead partner changed after a year to a leading homelessness agency. The pilot experience suggested that whilst a foyer could be the lead partner, other relevant organisations may also be appropriate lead agencies. The initiative offered three key areas of activity: peer mentoring, family mediation and life skills:

Peer mentoring The service was intended to recruit up to twenty potential peer mentors in each area, which each pilot achieved successfully. However, retention proved more difficult and working with between five and ten mentors was more realistic. It was envisaged that peer mentors would be young people who had experienced housing related problems but who were not living in stable housing. However, the pilots attracted interest from young people in a range of situations, including those in the foyers, those with no experience of homelessness and also Safe Move users.

Family mediation The initiative planned to buy in mediation services locally. The Safe Moves

34 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support project undertook early intervention work with families within the project without the use of formal family mediation services, but discussed the immediate situation with young people and also sometimes with their parents (with the young person’s consent).

Life skills The safe moves project undertook to develop two different forms of life skills training. Day to day life skills as part of support provided by safe moves staff and other key workers. Secondly, more formal programmes of life skills accredited at national level. The first was found to be much easier to develop than the second.

Overall findings It was found that a flexible and proactive approach to providing support was most successful, including a range of different settings such as regular bases, other community settings, cafés and occasionally a young person’s home. The use of different means of communication to keep in touch with young people was important, with mobile phone contact and text messaging particularly effective. In contrast, contact by letter was less successful.

A key lesson was the need for better resourcing and longer lead in times, for the development of local services. Local context heavily influenced the speed at which services could be developed, especially in the rural areas, where existing mediation and structures to support peer mentoring were inadequate. A successful aspect of Safe Moves was in helping young people at risk of homelessness remain safely in the parental home. At the same time, young people and key agencies also reported that Safe Moves also had positive impact on young people’s confidence, self-esteem, emotional well-being and motivation.

Projects worked most effectively when they adopted a flexible, but integrated approach. For example, the family mediation services seemed to work best where mediators were either recruited as dedicated workers for the project, or were delivered by the same agency.

The Safe Moves project cost £300,000, with each pilot costing between £35- 47,000, excluding in-kind costs provided by agencies. Funders included Connexions, ODPM, Department for Education and Skills, Home Office and the Freemasons Grand Charity.

The majority of funding went on employing one or more staff to coordinate and deliver the service. Specific funds were also available to purchase family mediation services and for peer mentoring training. Unit costs per client were calculated at between £500 and £1,400 across the projects, with an overall average of about £1000. This compares to £400 a week for a hostel bed, £650 for processing a local authority homelessness application and £2,800 for a failed tenancy. For the younger age group, foster care costs about £593 a week. The evaluation considered Safe Moves good value for money.

Rural context G The two rural pilots experienced a number of distinctive issues, including:

G The rural projects were slower in developing peer mentoring because of difficulties in identifying appropriate training courses for the peer mentors in these areas.

35 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

G The two urban projects were able to locate family mediation services quite easily, but the rural projects found it very difficult to identify family mediation providers. One project employed an independent family mediator, whilst the other project had to recruit a family worker onto the Safe Moves team. Even where family mediation services existed, these were not providing services for the younger age group, and therefore they had to be adapted to extend their services to this new client group.

G Effective links between Safe Moves and other agencies were crucial in order to deliver holistic service to young people. In the pilots good relationships were established with agencies such as schools and local housing providers, although projects found it hard to engage social services. Services were particularly effective at engaging with young people where workers adopted proactive approach to keeping in touch, working on an outreach basis, rather than expecting young people to visit the site.

G In one of the rural pilots, a high proportion of referrals came from education welfare workers or teachers in local schools. In the early stages of the pilots, young people were more likely to be living away from the family home, which reflected referrals from agencies dealing with the aftermath of homelessness, rather than services which were in a position to detect risks of homelessness among young people still living at home.

G The intended role of the coordinator was to organise the delivery of core services and coordinate this provision by working with other agencies. The original model had been the urban based Safe in the City project in London. However, in practice, the coordinators took a much more hands on role, directly supporting young people as well as referring to other services. This was due to low level of service provision in the rural areas such as family mediation.

G In terms of tenure and local housing markets, half the young people in the two rural areas were drawn from the owner occupied sector.

G The lack of services in the rural pilot areas meant that funding was required to develop new services, or enhance the capacity of existing services.

G The evaluation concluded that Safe Moves could have a significant impact at local level, which was particularly pronounced in rural areas, in making a contribution to local homelessness strategies.

36 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Table 2: summarising the early intervention model Model Summary description A preventative model to assist young people who are at risk of homelessness. An evaluation suggested that the development of a core and cluster model would be most effective, offering three key services, but supplementing this with other types of support. viable strengths The Safe Moves project cost £300,000, with each pilot costing between £35-47,000, excluding in-kind costs provided by agencies. Funders included Connexions, ODPM, Department for Education and Skills, Home Office and the Freemasons Grand Charity. The majority of funding went on employing one or more staff to coordinate and deliver the service. Specific funds were also available to purchase family mediation services and for peer mentoring training. Unit costs per client were calculated at between £500 and £1,400 across the projects, with an overall average of about £1000. This compares to £400 a week for a hostel bed, £650 for processing a local authority homelessness application and £2,800 for a failed tenancy. For the younger age group, foster care costs about £593 a week. The evaluation considered Safe Moves good value for money (Quilgars et al, 2004). weaknesses The lack of services in the rural pilot areas meant that funding was required to develop new services, or enhance the capacity of existing services – an issue that would have to be factored in to any consideration of costing this kind of service. sustainable strengths A consideration of the long term value of this approach would need to factor in the extent to which the model would prempt costs by preventing homelessness. Evaluating such an ‘invest to save’ model would ideally to take place in the context of a ’whole systems approach’, taking into account the costs and savings to all agencies that might be potentially affected. This approach might also require protocols between agencies to avoid issues such as cost shunting. weaknesses Although the initiative was considered good value for money by the evaluation (Quilgars et al, 2004) sources of funding would need to be tailored to the context in Scotland. effective strengths A key reported success of Safe Moves was in helping young people at risk of homelessness remain safely in the parental home. At the same time, young people and key agencies also reported that Safe Moves also had positive impact on young people’s confidence, self-esteem, emotional well-being and motivation. The evaluation concluded that Safe Moves could have a significant impact at local level, which was particularly pronounced in rural areas, in making a contribution to local homelessness strategies. weaknesses Since there were few services in place, structures and core services had to be set up from first principles. The development of this kind of model requires a long lead-in time. The model is intended to access other services, but in a rural context may need to take on direct delivery to meet current gaps. accessible strengths The model pulls to together access to a range of support: once young people are engaged in the project then a diverse range of needs can be met. weaknesses Although the pilot included two rural authorities, the projects were delivered from urban centres within them. For example, the Suffolk project was based in Felixstowe, a town within Suffolk Coastal District Council. Care would be needed to assess the replicability of the model in more remote areas.

37 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

2. Dispersed

Description of service The dispersed model aims to ensure the delivery of appropriate services outwith the larger settlement areas of a local authority and so keep households in the locations in which they may have informal support networks.

The following examples highlight support services which have a strong focus on prevention and that offer floating support as the means of delivery. Shelter has developed models of support in England and Scotland to help homeless households to resettle and sustain their tenancies. In England, the floating support model ‘Homeless to Home’ was developed, whilst in Scotland, Shelter have developed a number of projects in both urban and rural areas to help families and also single people.

Homeless to Home Homeless to Home was a model of floating support developed by Shelter in England to provide resettlement and tenancy sustainment support for households who have experienced homelessness. The service was primarily developed to help households with children, but one team has worked with all household types. The projects were quite small in scale, with a manager and three support workers handling caseloads of between 30 and 45 households.

The Homeless to Home service was initially established in three pilot areas: Birmingham, Bristol and Sheffield. These pilots were evaluated over an 18 month period between May 2000 and November 2001 (Jones et al, 2002a). Subsequently, this model was extended to other areas and it was anticipated that by March, 2005 there would be six further services in England, with a further six in development.

The three pilots that were evaluated broadly offered the following services:

G Assistance with housing and moving home

G Practical assistance in making a home

G Financial advice and support

G Help with accessing other services/advocacy

G Social and emotional support.

The evaluation showed that the three projects had demonstrated considerable success in helping formerly homeless families to sustain their tenancies and helping to build self-confidence and new skills (Jones et al, 2002a). Jones et al (2002a) reported that the success of the projects rested on three features of the projects:

G Flexibility

G Successful joint working and assistance with access to other services

G Providing a comprehensive response (involving other agencies as necessary).

In terms of flexibility, the projects were able to respond to the diverse range of needs of families, which meant that there were few areas in which projects could provide some form of assistance, even if that assistance was confined to approaching or involving other agencies on their behalf. A possible drawback in

38 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support rural and remote areas is that it is likely that other forms of assistance may be quite limited.

The projects were also successful in engaging with a variety of other agencies through joint working, either in the statutory or the voluntary sectors. Jones et al, (2002b) set out a range of underlying principles to promote joint working, including:

G Resettlement services being open with the organisations with whom they wish to work, and providing detailed information on their service delivery and effectiveness;

G Seeking to build relationships, ideally before a resettlement service becomes operational, at both a strategic and service delivery level;

G Establishing mutual respect;

G Recognising and understanding the constraints that other agencies are sometimes under.

Shelter’s Families Projects and the Single Homeless Person Support Service In Scotland, the Families Projects has operated in urban areas of the central belt including Edinburgh, Glasgow and South Lanarkshire. The specific remit of these services has been to:

G Help homeless families with the transition from being homeless and/or in temporary accommodation to secure permanent homes, providing services to meet their needs;

G Help homeless families to develop or regain the confidence and skills to cope successfully in their own home;

G Minimise the trauma of homeless on children and reduce the pressure on parents through Child Support Workers;

G Prevent the recurrence of homelessness.

This approach has recently been extended into Dumfries & Galloway, where this model has been tailored to operate in this rural area. Shelter also operates a service for single people in Dumfries & Galloway. Further, following a feasibility study, Shelter has embarked on a new project to establish a proposed capacity building service in Argyll & Bute. The intention is to establish a model of best practice for support services in rural areas, building on the experience gained in Dumfries & Galloway, and the new service in Argyll & Bute.

Rural context The emphasis in the evaluation of the Homeless to Home projects on effective joint working begs the question of the availability of other support services in rural and remote areas that can be accessed by the model. Similar to the early intervention model, either funding needs to be built in to allow essential elements of support to be funded from scratch, or to fund the higher costs of providing an accessible service in rural and remote areas. Realistically, there may be some intensive elements of support that can only be delivered in the kinds of accommodation based support services located in urban areas.

Further, the geography of different rural localities will affect the extent to which

39 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

an individual project may be able to offer a viable service within a realistic catchment area. In remote and island areas, unless a model can be adequately resourced so that it can be replicated in different localities, it will be too stretched either in terms of the physical distances that need to be travelled, individual staff members may be overwhelmed by their case loads, or the waiting lists for the services are so excessive as to render them virtually meaningless for potential service users.

40 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Table 3: Summarising the dispersed model Model Summary description The dispersed model aims to ensure the delivery of appropriate services outwith the larger settlement areas of a local authority and so keep households in the locations in which they may have informal support networks. The support services highlighted have a strong focus on prevention and offer floating support as the means of delivery.

Homeless to Home was a model of floating support developed by Shelter in England to provide resettlement and tenancy sustainment support for households who have experienced homelessness. The service was primarily developed to help households with children, but the fact that one team worked with all household types demonstrated the potential for meeting a wider variety of needs.

In Scotland, the Families Projects has operated in urban areas of the central belt including Edinburgh, Glasgow and South Lanarkshire. This approach has recently been extended into Dumfries & Galloway, where this model has been tailored to operate in this rural area. Shelter also operates a service for single people in Dumfries & Galloway. Further, following a feasibility study, Shelter has embarked on a new project to establish a proposed capacity building service in Argyll & Bute. viable strengths The families project in Dumfries & Galloway will include an assessment of the costs of providing the service against any potential savings the service might make through the prevention of homelessness. Funding for the Families Project in Dumfries & Galloway was provided by the Roberston Trust, and was match funded by the local authority.

The Housing Support Service for single people in Dumfries & Galloway was funded by the local authority under Supporting People. A review of this service by the authority concluded that “the service meets the Council’s strategic Aims in terms of provision to eliminate rough sleeping and support single homelessness” (Shelter, 2005). weaknesses One issue for projects operating in a rural area is not to take on too big a catchment area for the size of staff team available, with workers having to devote too much time to travel. The Housing Support Service for single people in Dumfries & Galloway reduced its area of coverage to maintain a viable scale of operation. This factor highlights the difficulties facing services operating in a rural environment and raises the question of equality issues for residents in rural areas who live outwith the catchment area of support services. On the other hand, the cost of providing a local authority wide service is likely to be prohibitive. sustainable strengths The homeless to home pilots were funded initially through the Community Fund and thereafter through Supporting People. weaknesses Similar to the weaknesses noted above in the section on viability, outreach support delivered from a single location could not be expected to serve all rural communities in authorities that cover large geographical areas. One possible option would be for a mobile service that operated from different locations at varying times. effective strengths The evaluation of the three Homeless to Home pilots in England showed that these had demonstrated considerable success in helping formerly homeless families to sustain their tenancies and helping to build self- confidence and new skills (Jones et al, 2002a). weaknesses The lack of other support services in many rural areas may hamper successful resettlement and tenancy sustainment. accessible strengths A strong focus of the Homeless to Home projects has been user involvement in service development. weaknesses Projects in rural areas are more likely to find it difficult to develop user involvement, as families may be out of reach of venues for user groups;

Projects will also find it more difficult to dovetail with other agencies and support services, which are likely to be lacking in rural and remote areas.

41 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

3. Enhanced access

Description of service The aim of the model is to ensure that information about services is available to individuals and communities that might otherwise remain outwith mainstream provision. This approach also draws in all agencies to ensure that front-line staff in health, housing and welfare are thoroughly aware of the breadth of service available to households in need.

People in rural and remote areas require a variety of ways in which they can approach services for help. Ways of making support accessible may include:

G Physical access to centralised offices /information access points

G Access via telephone, internet

G Developing first tier advice to service users

G Developing an integrated referral and signposting service – joint arrangements between agencies for referring or signposting people with housing support needs.

The opportunity for physical access to offices or information access points in rural and remote areas can be facilitated to a degree through the co-location of services. However, opportunities for the development of multiple sites is likely to be limited. In addition, promoting access via telephone services or the internet are also important options for people, particularly for individuals who are concerned about maintaining confidentiality. An alternative option is to develop a first tier advice and information service amongst existing voluntary agencies, and to provide links to a second tier support service via a coordinator, providing training and advice to support services working in rural communties. An important element of developing this approach would be working towards meeting the Communities Scotland Homepoint “Scottish National Standards for Housing and Information and Advice Services”.

Developing an integrated referral and signposting service A further approach would be to develop an integrated referral and signposting service. This service would be provided by staff from a variety of agencies who come into contact with people in a variety of settings, including visiting people out in rural and remote communities.

Frontline agencies that deliver services in rural and remote areas can act as information ‘triggers’ for households who may have diverse vulnerabilities. For example, households may come into contact with agencies in a health setting who could advise clients that a referral could be made to housing agencies.

Reciprocal arrangements between agencies could be in place, where housing difficulties form one component of a broader set of social exclusion criteria. For example, Staff working in Drug and Alcohol Action Teams might pick up housing issues and either signpost or refer clients to housing agencies, and vica versa.

Staff in a variety of agencies would be expected to have an awareness and understanding of issues outside their strict professional remit or training. Care would have to be taken that staff would not be expected to take responsibility for issues outside their job specification, but that they are in a position to refer on, or signpost, as necessary and appropriate, to other agencies. Specific

42 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support training would be required to enable staff who work in rural areas to take on this more generic role.

A key element of this role would be the requirement for clear strategies and protocols to be in place for dealing with referrals, signposting and establishing an understanding of each agency’s role and the setting of identifiable boundaries between agencies of the services that each will provide.

Table 4: summarising the enhanced access model

Model Summary description The overall objective of this model is to ensure that best use can be made of existing services by raising awareness of what is already available. The model’s aim is that information about services is available to individuals and communities that might otherwise remain outwith mainstream provision. This approach also draws in all agencies to ensure that front-line staff in health, housing and welfare are thoroughly aware of the breadth of services available to households in need. viable strengths A strength in rural areas is that the number of agencies will be lower than in large urban centres, so that networking and gaining an awareness of all services in operation should be less complex – but it should not be taken for granted that fewer services means that a strong awareness already exists on the part of both agencies and potential users. weaknesses One aim of the model is to uncover hidden needs that exist within rural communities, but this aim brings with it the potential for greater pressures on already tight budgets to meet the current needs that already arise through existing routes. sustainable strengths The model builds upon services that for the most part are already in place: it is about mainstreaming an information and signposting role across diverse services that operate in rural localities. weaknesses There are pressures from a number of directions on services to take on a more generic signposting role, not just from a housing and homelessness context, but also other issues such as substance misuse. There are limits to the extent to which frontline staff can be expected to continually expand their roles, calling for effective joint working at strategic level to coordinate and prioritise what may be realistically achieved. effective strengths Homepoint (2004) noted that outcomes are likely to be quite intangible with regard to advice services. However, two indicators suggested include:

User satisfaction;

Quality control systems for ensuring staff are trained and competent, information is accurate, and the quality of advice is of a high professional standard. The latter issue may also be of particular significance in rural areas where users may need to be convinced that confidentiality can be guaranteed.

A further consideration about enhancing access to services is the identification of formerly hidden needs. Shelter (2005) argued that the value of developing projects in rural areas is as much to demonstrate needs as it is to meet those needs. weaknesses Attention needs to be focused on overcoming negative perceptions of potential users about agencies, or that households may not feel they can approach services for help because they think they are not eligible or are not aware of the range of support that can be offered. Consideration needs to be given about not labelling people as ‘homeless’. accessible strengths The model should broaden access to support services by providing a greater number of possible contacts who can act as an information ‘trigger’, and can signpost people to support services that may be able to help with diverse vulnerabilities, including the risk of homelessness. The model does not put forward that support services themselves will necessarily be delivered within rural communities, but that households have greater access in rural areas to help and information which recognises that they may have a problem that needs to be resolved. weaknesses Barriers in relation to IT use, or access to physical locations, or even mobile services in areas with a highly dispersed population.

43 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

4. Capacity development

Description of service This model aims to develop the capacity of communities in rural and remote areas to respond to the challenges facing households in relation to housing difficulties. There are three elements to this model. The first element concerns raising awareness of homelessness as an issue in rural communities. The second element is to enhance the capacity of individuals to help tackle homelessness within their communities, through the development of a network of volunteers who may be able to provide help in a variety of roles. The third element of the capacity development model is to develop and support the capacity of services provided by statutory and voluntary agencies and community groups operating in rural areas to offer support solutions for people in rural areas.

Raising awareness of homelessness issues in rural communities Raising awareness of homelessness issues could be within the remit of a dedicated community development worker, part of the role of a ‘homelessness champion’, or part of a wider commitment on tackling social exclusion issues. Agencies such as the Rural Housing Service, Small Communities Housing Trust, and Shelter Housing Action with Rural Communities (SHARC) already undertake much work in communities to highlight housing issues.

Develop and coordinate the role of volunteers in providing housing and support solutions for people within rural communities There are a number of examples of networks of volunteers in rural areas. The report noted earlier the LINKS project in Northumberland. Shelter Scotland (2005) has also noted their experience in working with trained volunteers in rural areas through the Dumfries & Galloway Shelter single persons project. Training might include issues such as: handy persons services helping households to help themselves, rather than just undertaking works. As noted by a respondent, training also offers the opportunity for motivating and incentivising volunteers.

Low level support could be offered by volunteers through:

G Handy person services

G Befriending

G Nightstop

G Supported lodgings.

There may also be lessons that could be drawn from the experience of agencies that have developed volunteer networks in rural areas, especially ‘First Responder’ services in health or the fire service.

Develop and build capacity of voluntary agencies and community groups It is suggested that this model may have potential in geographically remote areas. Operating in a rural area with a widely dispersed population may require an alternative approach to the two previous models highlighted. Instead, the focus might be to develop and support the capacity of voluntary agencies and community groups in these areas to provide support services.

The coordinator would be a pivotal position in this model, taking on a generic role in relation addressing housing issues. Streich et al (2002) noted that

44 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support support workers and volunteers operating in a rural context are often called upon to respond to a wider range of client needs than would be expected of their urban counterparts. A couple of respondents also noted this issue in relation to providing support in rural areas of Scotland. Further, the coordinator would: manage the network of volunteers and provide support to voluntary agencies and community groups in rural areas that are delivering support services; provide second tier advice, and act as a conduit for referrals from volunteers and agencies, and link with specialised housing support services and other agencies. Nevertheless, the use of volunteers in a rural context, whilst offering considerable potential, should not be viewed as a low cost option as compared with the direct delivery of services by paid staff within agencies. A point highlighted in the workshop with practitioners was that the careful monitoring of outcomes against costs, perhaps in a demonstration project, might examine the assertion that community led solutions can potentially lead to a greater quality of service.

Rural context Households who may want to take advantage of this kind of service may perceive that there may be a difficulty in maintaining confidentiality. One option would be for the agency coordinating the service to link households with a broader network of volunteers in other neighbouring communities, or for households to know that they have the option to refer themselves, or be referred, to centralised services in larger settlements. On one hand, a couple of respondents noted that a number of communities in rural and remote areas have a traditional culture of self help, which can be supported to facilitate help for homeless or potentially homeless households. However, it should not be assumed that all communities have the same characteristics, and are imbued with a philanthropic culture and traditions by virtue of being ‘rural’.

Although providing low level support may help a number of households to continue living in their own communities, there needs to be recognition that it may be more appropriate for some people to move to accommodation based services with more intensive support in larger settlements.

45 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Table 5: summarising the capacity development model Model

Summary description The capacity development model aims to develop the capacity of communities in rural and remote areas to respond to the challenges facing households in relation to housing difficulties. There are three elements to this model; To raise awareness of homelessness as an issue in rural communities, To enhance the capacity of individuals to help tackle homelessness within their communities, through the development of a network of volunteers who may be able to provide help in a variety of roles, and To develop and support the capacity of services provided by statutory and voluntary agencies and community groups operating in rural areas to offer support solutions for people in rural areas. viable strengths One issue in rural areas with a sparse population is that the number of households requiring support in any single community or area is likely to be low. Further, such needs in any single community are likely to be intermittent, without there necessarily being a constant demand for services, making the use of volunteers an appropriate response in this context. weaknesses .A model with a strong emphasis on using volunteers should not necessarily be viewed as a low cost option in comparison with the direct delivery of support services. sustainable strengths The model attempts to work with existing groups and agencies within rural areas, or to foster interest amongst residents in the issue of housing difficulties, rather than deliver a new service directly. weaknesses However, where there are no services at all, then developing new services from scratch through a community development approach would be much more costly both in terms of staff time and providing funding to kickstart a new service. effective strengths Existing projects (such as the Shelter single persons homeless project) highlight the value of trained volunteers as part of a service. weaknesses Communities may be resistant to accepting that homelessness is a problem within their communities; may be concerned that homeless households will be ‘imported’ into their communities, or that there may be a limited pool of potential volunteers on which to draw. A further weakness may be that there are a limited number of voluntary agencies and community groups active in some rural areas accessible strengths The services provided should be highly accessible, since they are provided by volunteers within rural communities themselves, or by agencies operating in a rural context. weaknesses Households experiencing housing difficulties may perceive that there may be an issue around confidentiality provided by these types of service.

Conclusion The chapter has presented an evaluative framework for assessing potential models of support services in different rural areas. The chapter then illustrated how the framework might be applied, drawing up for different examples. An important element of any such evaluation is that models of best practice are not replicated in another area without some critical assessment of how far they may fit with the specific local context in which they are expected to operate. The next chapter pulls together some of the key findings of the literature review about how the delivery of support services is affected by the rural context, and summarises the way in which potential models might operate in different rural localities.

46 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

4 Conclusions

Introduction

Within the context of wider rural issues in Scotland, this research considers a range of support service models intended to help prevent homelessness, or to resolve homelessness when it does occur, in rural and remote rural areas. Whilst it is possible to identify some specific characteristics of rural homelessness (Everitt, 1995), other research has pointed out that key similarities exist in the profile of homelessness in rural and urban areas (Cloke et al, 2000). The research by Cloke et al (2000) also noted marked intra-rural variations in homelessness profiles, highlighting the importance of an appreciation of differences between rural localities, sometimes within the same local authority. The discussions with service providers in Scotland also reflected these findings. One respondent felt that it was important not to characterise some of the causes of homelessness as specifically urban in nature, and that issues such as domestic violence or substance misuse could trigger homelessness in both urban and rural areas alike. Nevertheless, diverse needs between different rural localities were also identified by respondents. Three service providers identified that families often featured as a key group at risk of homelessness, one of whom identified the seasonal nature of the local economy as an important underlying cause of housing difficulties. In contrast, another service provider highlighted single homelessness amongst young people within parts of their authority as a significant issue. These findings serve to reinforce the importance of an analysis of needs at local level as part of a consideration of which models of support might best serve to address the prevention of homelessness in specific rural localities.

A key aspect of providing support services for homeless households in rural and remote rural areas, as with many other aspects of service delivery in these areas, is that the way that such services can be effectively delivered has to take account of the rural context. Although there are many models for support services, their applicability in the diverse range of circumstances that exist in the rural and remote rural areas of Scotland requires close examination. This research has attempted to develop an evaluative framework for assessing the delivery of support services for homeless people in rural areas, and has put forward four different approaches to illustrate how this framework might be applied.

Challenges facing the provision of support services in rural areas

A principal consideration for community planners is the extent to which support services can feasibly be developed and delivered within rural communities themselves, and how far services will be delivered from larger, urban settlements. An issue in rural areas is that the number of households requiring support in any single community or area is likely to be low. Further, that such needs in any single community are likely to be intermittent, without there necessarily being a constant demand for services. One aspect of tailoring support to rural areas, therefore, is that services can be called upon as and when the need arises, or support for homeless people that can be offered as one component of an existing service.

47 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Accommodation Streich et al (2002) pointed out that non-hostel based emergency services should be considered as a preferred model for meeting emergency need in remote rural areas. Indeed, Ransley (1995) noted that it is unlikely to be possible or desirable to provide urban models of direct access provision in rural settings. Instead, possible models include:

G rural nightstop schemes, where local people make a room available within their home as needed on a rota basis;

G Supported lodgings offer a flexible option for provision in rural areas, mainly for young people;

G An alternative approach has been to use rent deposit schemes as a way of assisting access into the private rented sector, or ways of encouraging the refurbishment of privately owned empty properties through various mechanisms such as the Lead Tenancy Scheme;

G Making use of social rented stock for temporary accommodation.

Research has identified that one of the challenges facing homeless people and agencies seeking to address this problem in rural areas is a lack of awareness and acceptance of homelessness in rural areas by the wider community (Cloke et al, 2001b), which may extend to include local agencies as well (Oldman, 2002). Further, Streich et al (2002) pointed out that there may be difficulties both in identifying needs, but also in resistance to the development of services to meet the needs of homeless people. Any negative perceptions of homeless people may lead to anxieties within communities where homeless households are housed in permanent or temporary accommodation. In particular, in remote rural areas where the population is very sparse, homeless households may be highly visible. However, one scheme reported that it was worth persisting in working with communities to turn around attitudes towards homeless people, which could result in the development practical local solutions within communities (Macklin, 1995). Furthermore, Strachan et al (2000) noted that the culture of some rural communities was very much that people should be able to look out for themselves, but that such a view was being countered by a growing awareness that, in the context of broader economic trends, anybody could become unemployed and/or homeless. Burns (2005) also highlighted that the local media in Northumberland had played a role in raising the profile of rural homelessness arising from sharp rises in local house prices. In other words, the message that local people are suffering due to external factors beyond their control is a way of reducing the stigma and sense of individual failure that can pervade the experience of homelessness.

Certainly, one way of achieving help for homeless people in rural areas through the provision of support is through raising the profile of homelessness in rural areas. This approach could help to:

G Identify needs;

G Lobby for resources;

G Encourage the development of local, community based solutions.

48 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Multi-agency working A key element of co-ordinating a response to the support needs of households in rural and remote areas is to use reciprocal arrangements where agencies have clear strategies and protocols in place for dealing with referrals, signposting and establishing a clear understanding of each other roles and identifiable boundaries between the services that agencies will provide. Having reciprocal agreements between agencies in place may mean that staff are expected to have an awareness and understanding of issues outside their strict professional remit or training. This is not to say that staff are necessarily expected to take responsibility for issues outside their job specification, but that they are in a position to refer on, or signpost, as necessary and appropriate to other agencies. At the same time, there is a case for staff who work in rural localities to take on a more generic role, where joint working and signposting may well become core activities both within job specifications and in training opportunities. For example, health staff may have a role in recognising issues that may lead to homelessness and refer people to housing support services. Conversely, housing staff may have a role in picking up on drug and/or alcohol issues and referring people to Drug and Alcohol Action Teams. The aim would be for a range of frontline agencies that deliver services in rural and remote areas to act as ‘triggers’ for households who may have diverse vulnerabilities and who thus have a variety of routes in to different types of support. However, a point highlighted in the workshop was that there are many competing demands on frontline staff to take on a more generic or agency role, not only in the context of recognising homelessness, but also other issues, for example, such as substance misuse. There are limits to the extent to which staff can realistically be expected to bolt on additional tasks and roles, which calls for effective working at strategic level to coordinate between competing demands on staff time.

Accessing advice and information A recurring theme in the literature on rural homelessness is poor access to advice and information (e.g. Ransley, 1995). It has been found, in England at least, that the kinds of homelessness where good advice can make a significant impact are more prevalent in rural areas, such as mortgage arrears

49 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

and the loss of tied and private rented accommodation (Everitt, 1995). There are recent examples of approaches to providing information in rural areas, through the use of directories and also the internet, and also contrasting approaches such as, on the one hand, a mobile service in Grampian which provides information in rural communities and, on the other hand, information provided from a single access point on Mull, with a freephone service.

In addition, service providers can also enhance the potential offered by formal and informal support networks. This approach can build upon services such as mentoring, befriending and life skills, either through more professionalised services directly provided by statutory or voluntary agencies, or developing the role of volunteers and the capacity of social networks in rural and remote rural areas. Helping to support and accommodate people within their own communities can reap dividends in terms of providing the means to help people to help themselves through their own family and broader social networks. Bevan et al (2001) noted the crucial role that was played by new affordable housing in rural communities as a means for people to turn their lives around within familiar surroundings after events such as relationship breakdown - for example, through family or friends being willing to take on childcare to allow people to go out to work. However, it should also be noted that relationships within rural communities, as anywhere else, may not necessarily be benign or supportive, and events such as a relationship breakdown, or a fall out between family members can lead to ‘taking sides’ and ostracism within communities. This point highlights the necessity for alternatives for people, to get out of communities if they feel the need, or if abusive situations require action. Of course, for some, especially younger people, staying in a rural community is the last thing they want, which is why there is a balance to be struck between aiming to tackle hidden needs at the point of source, within rural localities, and continuing to provide services in urban centres.

Developing and maintaining a physical presence for services in rural areas One option for support in relation to maintaining or enhancing their physical presence in rural and remote areas is through sharing buildings with other agencies. Previous research has noted the value of co-locating services as one strategy for minimising the effects of remoteness, and has identified examples of local arrangements for access to premises held by a wide range of agencies (Effective Interventions Unit, 2004). However, there is a balance to be struck between providing a physical presence in rural areas, and ensuring that a service centre can meet needs of a wide catchment area. Multi-service outlets need to be accessible for public transport, which suggests small urban centres, rather than in outlaying rural communities, otherwise the outlet will be inaccessible for any households who live outside the community in which the outlet is based. Further evidence as to the efficacy of co-location will become available when current research for the Scottish Executive is published, which

50 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support is examining the costs and benefits of co-locating services in rural Scotland. Nevertheless, one consideration for the co-location of support services is the extent to which projects that support the needs of homeless households may be unpopular within some communities where the potential for shared facilities may exist, and also the issue of ensuring the confidentiality of service users.

Supporting staff Considerable attention has rightly focused in the literature on the experiences of households facing homelessness in rural areas, but there are also a range of issues around recruiting and retaining staffing that hinder the provision of support services in rural areas as well. Such difficulties include:

G salaries that can be offered in rural areas tend to be lower than salaries paid by services in major urban centres;

G people tend to stay in the area where they studied or trained, resulting in an inclination for staff to remain in urban areas, and very few working and living in rural areas;

G another disincentive for potential employees to make a move into rural areas is the lack of affordable housing;

G The pool of skills on which services can draw when they advertise for jobs can also be very limited, particularly in remote areas;

G worker isolation and low morale may be significant, associated with difficulties with having trained specialists to support and supervise staff, and where managers may be a considerable distance from their staff;

G small staff teams may have to cover large rural areas, and also provide cover for holidays or sickness or longer term cover if posts remain unfilled for longer periods of time;

G staff safety is also an issue, in situations where staff may have to make lone visits to people in remote areas.

Developing a model of support for rural or remote areas has implications the structures of support for staff. One factor is the provision of training tailored to a context where staff may be expected to adopt a wide range of skills and areas of knowledge in order to meet the requirements for providing a generic service. A way of tackling a lower skill base amongst potential employees is to budget for an enhanced training and induction programme for employees. A further solution is to provide a supportive network for the exchange of information and to enable building links with other agencies.

51 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Models of support services in rural areas

A key lesson from the literature is that addressing support needs in rural and remote areas needs to be ‘done differently’, compared with services provided in urban contexts. An overarching principle for delivering support services is that a holistic approach to meeting the needs of different clients is required, with access to specialised services supported from an area hub. The approach of providing generic support in rural and remote areas has been noted as a potential model for other forms of service provision, and not just in relation to meeting the needs of homelessness people. For example, the Effective Interventions Unit (2004) stated that one of the key influences on the range and capacity of services available to drug users in rural and remote areas was the extent to which generic services addressed drug misuse problems among their clients. Another key principle to emerge from the literature and from discussions with practitioners is the value of community led solutions, and also building on existing capacity in rural areas, both in the statutory and voluntary sectors. Underlying the development of new support services is, of course, the issue of how are they going to be paid for? Even in cases where the capital costs of new services may not represent a difficulty, the revenue implications of starting up and then maintaining a new service perhaps requires greater joined up working at strategic level between funders and practitioners. The research has put forward an evaluative framework to assess potential models of support services against four indicators to examine to what extent the models are: viable; sustainable; effective and accessible.

An important element of any evaluation is the need to acknowledge the importance of the wider context in which a service may operate, factoring in issues such as the local housing market, and the availability of affordable housing choices both in terms of temporary provision and the availability of long term housing solutions. To this end, a number of questions were also developed to help guide our evaluation, and allow a consideration of the service against circumstances that exist in diverse rural areas, including the wider contexts in which services will have to operate – the rationale being that models which might work in some rural contexts may be entirely inappropriate in others. Certainly one point arising from discussions with service providers was that a consideration of the replicability of any model needs to include a critical assessment of how far the model is appropriate for the specific local context in which the model would be expected to operate.

The research presented four suggested models that aimed to address the following issues:

1) Early intervention To address in a focussed way the needs of particular households where it is felt that there is a risk that chronic homelessness will become an issue. Work rests on the proactive recognition of households were there are early indications that housing problems may become chronic (ie households with anti-social behaviour issues; where rental arrears have been evident; where there have been instances of domestic violence, etc).

52 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support services/floating support may be grafted on to a strong central management and service core.

Conclusion

The research has drawn on evidence as to why people become or remain homeless, and has sought to make links between an analysis of the problems and possible solutions in rural and remote areas. The range of examples of support services that either already exist, or that could be replicated, in rural and remote rural areas demonstrate the value of pursuing specific models that address homelessness within rural localities. It is hoped that the models highlighted in this report demonstrate a positive way in which services can be developed to meet local needs. However, no single model offers an ‘off the shelf’ solution that will be relevant to all the diverse circumstances that exists in rural and remote areas. Instead, the research has suggested an evaluative framework which could be used to assess the applicability of models in rural areas, and it would be valuable to see how far the framework has ‘buy in’ from practitioners and service users as a useful way forwards.

Recommendations

A key lesson from the literature is that addressing support needs in rural and remote areas needs to be ‘done differently’, compared with services provided in urban contexts. There is a sense that operating in areas with very geographically dispersed communities requires agencies to be ‘all things to all people’. While there may be low numbers of service users in any one locality, the people who do require support may have very diverse needs. However, since the range of services operating in many rural and remote areas may well be very limited, there is a pressure on the support services that do operate in these areas to respond meaningfully to these diverse needs in situ, by being able to deploy a wide range of skills. This feature of working in rural and remote areas has also been noted in healthcare settings, where it has been suggested that health services need to formally recognise and nurture the ways of working that best meet the needs of households who live in rural and remote areas. There are a number of recommendations that flow from this overall conclusion:

53 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

The implications of this style of approach would be:

G a generic signposting role for frontline staff across a range of agencies;

G training, and perhaps accreditation, to reflect joint working;

G training, and perhaps accreditation, to acknowledge the range of skills required by agencies that operate specifically in rural and remote localities;

G joint working between agencies responsible for funding, including standardised and uniform monitoring requirements that avoid the need for service providers to duplicate effort;

G joint approaches at strategic level to facilitate the cross boundary working required to arrive at a generalised approach and to provide the mutual trust between partner agencies to avoid issues such as cost shunting, and to avoid overloading frontline staff.

2) Helping homeless service users or households at risk of homelessness to access services requires specialist support. Adopting a generalised approach might also require a more specialised support service for homeless people or people at risk of homelessness. Fitzpatrick et al (2004) found that homeless families lacked the confidence, motivation or skills to access mainstream services, even if it was appropriate for their needs, without some sort of specialist assistance to act as a bridge to these services. Further, this report noted that the provision of information about mainstream services, whilst important, was not sufficient.

However, it is important that this kind of support can be provided to as broad a base of service users as possible. There may be potential for some elements of specialised help to be provided across different client groups, and this approach may help to make some specialised services more accessible within rural localities, since they can cover different types of household.

3) Ensuring the confidentiality of service users is a particular facet of rural service delivery, and requires multiple options for people to have different routes into services. Living in small communities brings with it the potential for greater visibility on the part of households or individuals who may be experiencing a range of issues, one of which might be homelessness or the risk of homelessness. Trying to ensure the confidentiality of service users is a particular facet of rural service delivery, and requires multiple options for people to have routes into

54 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support services. Although there may be considerable potential for volunteers in rural areas, there also needs to be clear signposting to alternatives for people who do not want to raise any personal issues with people in their own communities, such as telephone advice lines, or central drop in services in larger settlements.

4) Developing community capacity is a key element in developing a response to the needs of homeless households or households at risk of homelessness within rural and remote localities. An issue in many rural areas is that the need for a homelessness support service is likely to arise intermittently in any one community. Developing community capacity may offer one solution to this aspect of needs in rural areas since volunteers can respond as and when they are required. As such volunteers may be in a position to provide advice and signposting, or even emergency accommodation in the form of a rural nightstop, to provide short term accommodation whilst the needs of a household are assessed. Emergency services have developed expertise in delivering a ‘First Responder’ approach to addressing on the spot cover in some rural and remote rural localities, and it may be the case that a ‘First responder’ style of approach could be developed in relation to homeless support services. Further, there may be lessons that can be learnt from existing ‘First Responder’ services in terms of providing training, coordination and managing this style of approach in the context of homeless support services. Developing community capacity within rural communities would require a coordinating role to initiate, sustain and support voluntary activity in communities and to build upon existing capacity.

5) One way of assessing potential responses to the support needs of households that live in particular localities within rural and remote areas might be to link needs assessments with an appraisal of local resources. Identifying the most appropriate responses in particular locations might involve linking together needs assessments with an appraisal of local resources. The latter might develop as one element of the Community Planning process. The aim would be to develop an options appraisal that could feed into local authority Local Housing Strategies and Homelessness Strategies.

6) Working in rural and remote localities poses specific challenges in terms of finding, training and valuing staff Recognising the recruitment and retention issues in many rural areas with regard to staffing also goes hand in hand with tailoring training to meet the challenges of working in rural localities where a wide range of skills and knowledge may be required to meet needs which, although numerically small, may well be very diverse.

55 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

56 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

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59 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

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Appendix 1 Definitions

The following discussion sets out the definitions used in this report in relation to homelessness, homelessness support and housing support, community capacity building and rural areas.

Homelessness The Homelessness Task Force (2001) identified a range of housing situations that defined homelessness as: ’Persons defined in current legislation as homeless persons and persons threatened with homelessness’;

Persons experiencing one or more of the following situations:

G rooflessness (persons without shelter of any kind);

G houseless (living in emergency and temporary accommodation provided for homeless people);

G households residing in accommodation which is unsuitable as long stay accommodation because they have nowhere else to stay;

G persons residing in institutions because they have nowhere else to stay;

G insecure accommodation (such as tenants or owner-occupiers likely to be evicted, persons with no legal rights or permission to remain in accommodation, or persons with only short term permission to stay);

G involuntary sharing of housing in unreasonable circumstances (those persons who are involuntary sharing accommodation with another household on a long-term basis in housing circumstances deemed to be unreasonable).

A key aspect of this definition is that the HTF recognised a range of vulnerable persons at risk of homeless, who were the subject of proposed preventative action.

In arriving at a definition of hidden homelessness, previous research has highlighted that a key distinction needs to be made between the breadth of the definition of homelessness and the notion of ‘hidden’ homelessness. People can be considered ‘visibly’ homeless if: their homelessness is recorded in official statistics; they are in contact with homelessness agencies and/or staying in homeless hostels, or they are sleeping rough in visible areas or on known sites. The hidden homeless are those people whose homelessness is not visible in these respects (Fitzpatrick et al, 2000). Thus, people in all categories and definitions of homelessness can remain hidden. Therefore, a definition of homelessness also needs to embrace a breadth of housing need. In rural areas, people may be sleeping rough in hidden locations, such as barns or fields, derelict buildings, caravans or in cars, etc. Nevertheless, most hidden homeless people are likely to be staying with friends or relatives and recent research has highlighted this issue in rural areas (Robinson and Coward, 2003). The research by Robinson and Coward (2003) found that over three-quarters of homeless people in their rural case study in England had stayed with a friend or relative since becoming homeless and two thirds in the rural case study had only ever stayed with a friend or relative since becoming homeless.

Reasons for staying with a friend or relative included a lack of alternative

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options, limited awareness of available options and the immediacy of the need, which can prohibit efforts to search out advice and assistance. A lack of direct access accommodation for people who had little warning before experiencing homelessness was also a particular problem, especially for a number of women fleeing violence. Indeed, it was found that women generally were more likely than men to stay with a friend or relative on becoming homeless. A key conclusion from the research by Robinson and Coward (2003) was that attention needed to be focused on the situations of homeless people staying with friends and family in arriving at estimates of homelessness in rural areas.

Homelessness support and housing support A “housing support service” is a service that provides support, assistance, advice or counselling to a person who has particular needs, with a view to enabling that person to occupy residential accommodation and maintain independent living. The 21 different types of housing support services eligible for Supporting People funding are prescribed by the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 (Housing Support Services) Regulations 2002, and include:

G General counselling and support including befriending, advising on food preparation, reminding and non-specialist counselling where this does not overlap with similar services provided as personal care or personal support.

G Assisting with the security of the dwelling required because of the needs of the service user.

G Assisting with the maintenance of the safety of the dwelling.

G Advising and supervising service users on the use of domestic equipment and appliances.

G Assisting with arranging minor repairs to and servicing of a service user’s own domestic equipment and appliances.

G Providing life skills training in maintaining the dwelling and curtilage in appropriate condition.

G Assisting the service user to engage with individuals, professionals and other bodies with an interest in the welfare of the service user.

G Arranging adaptations to enable the service user to cope with disability.

G Advising or assisting the service user with personal budgeting and debt counselling.

G Advising or assisting the service user in dealing with relationships and disputes with neighbours.

G Advising or assisting the service user in dealing with benefit claims and other official correspondence relevant to sustaining occupancy of the dwelling.

G Advising or assisting with resettlement of the service user.

G Advising or assisting the service user to enable him or her to move on to accommodation where less intense support is required.

G Assisting with shopping and errands where this does not overlap with similar services provided as personal care or personal support.

G Providing and maintaining emergency alarm and call systems in accommodation designed or adapted for and occupied by elderly, sick or disabled people.

64 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

G Responding to emergency alarm calls, where such calls relate to any of the housing support services prescribed in other paragraphs of this Schedule, in accommodation designed or adapted for and occupied by elderly, sick or disabled people.

G Controlling access to individual service users’ rooms.

G Cleaning of service users’ own rooms and windows.

G Providing for the costs of resettlement services.

G Encouraging social intercourse and welfare checks for residents of accommodation supported by either a resident warden or a non-resident warden with a system for calling that warden where this does not overlap with similar services provided as personal care or personal support.

G Arranging social events for residents of accommodation supported by either a resident warden or a non-resident warden with a system for calling that warden.

It should be noted that the potential for providing homelessness support goes much wider than the definition for ‘housing support’ given above, and can encapsulate a diverse range of services, including, for example, accommodation options, the development of protocols and joint working, community capacity building, early intervention work in schools, maximising access to advice and information though Information Technology.

Capacity Building Capacity building can be seen as a crucial aspect of service delivery, not only in relation to helping individuals to realise their potential, through interventions such as confidence building, self-esteem, life skills, education and training, benefits, pastoral care but also working more broadly with communities. Indeed, there is a strong emphasis in the report on tapping into the knowledge, skills and expertise that exist within communities in rural and remote areas. In this regard, community capacity building and may be defined as,

“development work which strengthens the ability of community-based organisations and groups to build their structures, systems and skills. This enables them to better define and achieve their objectives and engage in consultation, planning and development and management. It also helps them to take an active and equal role in the partnerships with other organisations and agencies. Capacity building includes aspects of training, consultancy, organisational and personal development, mentoring and peer group support, organised in a planned manner and based on the principles of empowerment and equality.” (Duncan and Thomas, 2000, p6).

Chapman and Kirk (2001) highlight that communities are comprised of a range of people with different needs, interests and perspectives. The idea of ‘community’ is not necessarily always benign and can lead to different groups being in conflict with each other, with competing priorities. As such, community capacity building must aim to achieve community development that addresses the needs of all individuals, and include groups that are vulnerable or suffer social exclusion.

Rural areas Although not used in every instance, the Scottish Executive has provided a general definition of Rural Scotland as settlements with a population of less

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than 3000. The Scottish Executive Urban Rural Classification distinguishes between ‘accessible’ and ‘remote’ rural areas, based on drive time to a settlement of 10,000 or more people. The differences between remote and more accessible rural areas are classified as settlements, which are:

G remote rural – those with a greater than 30-minute drivetime to the nearest settlement with a population of greater than 10,000;

G accessible rural - those with a 30-minute or less drivetime to the nearest settlement with a population of greater than 10,000.

The Scottish Executive have also produced a six and eight fold classification of urban and rural areas in Scotland. Two main criteria were used to produce these classifications: settlement size as defined by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) and accessibility based on drive time analysis to differentiate between accessible and remote areas in Scotland. The Settlements and accessibility data were then combined to create a Scotland wide classification. The six fold classification includes the following categories:

Scottish Executive Urban Rural Classification 1 Large Urban Areas Settlements of over 125,000 people. 2 Other Urban Areas Settlements of 10,000 to 125,000 people. 3 Accessible Small Towns Settlements of between 3,000 and 10,000 people and within 30 minutes drive of a settlement of 10,000 or more. 4 Remote Small Towns Settlements of between 3,000 and 10,000 people and with a drive time of over 30 minutes to a settlement of 10,000 or more. 5 Accessible Rural Settlements of less than 3,000 people and within 30 minutes drive of a settlement of 10,000 or more. 6 Remote Rural Settlements of less than 3,000 people and with a drive time of over 30 minutes to a settlement of 10,000 or more.

Settlements containing less than 10,000 people and with a drive time of over 30 minutes to a settlement of 10,000 or more are defined as remote areas. These are categories 4 and 6 in the classification.

Accessible Remote Classification Accessible Large Urban Areas, Other Urban Areas, Accessible Small Towns, Accessible Rural Remote Remote Small Towns, Remote Rural

• A map of the urban rural classification is shown on the next page.

66 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

67 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

68 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

Appendix 2 Topic guide for service providers

Providing homelessness support services in rural areas – exploring models for providing more effective local support.

Background

The Centre for Housing Policy, University of York, has been commissioned by Communities Scotland to investigate models of service delivery for homelessness support which are, or potentially might be, applied in rural and remote areas in order to prevent or resolve homelessness. These models will include both the content of services and the means of delivery within the context of wider rural issues and the main output of the research will be to propose models which can be developed and investigated further. This research will be of assistance to Communities Scotland and Scottish Executive staff, local authorities and other providers of homelessness support services who have an involvement with rural areas.

Defining homelessness support services

Housing support can include services covered in the definition provided by the Supporting People framework, primarily involved with helping to prevent homelessness. Support also covers services to resolve homelessness when it does occur, including the provision of temporary accommodation, training, counselling, help with addiction related problems and other activities.

The current picture

It would be very helpful to get an idea of the current picture of homelessness support services that cover your area.

Could you tell me what services there are to support or help homeless people/people at risk of homelessness or facing severe housing difficulties in the rural areas where you work (statutory and voluntary sector)?

For example:

G Advice/information

G Tenancy sustainment (help with: establishing a home; daily living skills; establishing and maintaining social support; accessing benefits, health and community care services)

G Mediation

G Drug and alcohol services

G services tailored for specific groups (such as young people, older people, mental health, People leaving institutions, LGBT)

G accessing labour markets/employment

G training/education/life skills (Education in schools – use of SCSH leaving Home pack)

69 Providing Homelessness Support Services in Rural and Remote Rural Areas: Exploring models for providing more effective local support

G temporary or permanent housing (including help with access into private housing such as rent deposit schemes).

G raising awareness of homelessness within the broader community Are there any gaps in services that could be provided to provide support to homeless people/potentially homeless people in your area? What are the main barriers to providing support services that exist in the rural areas where you operate?

G How does this differ from urban areas? Are there things which are specific to rural areas, or are issues more general across Scotland – both urban and rural? For example: - cost of delivering services in rural areas; - what are the reasons for greater costs? - distances that people have to travel to access services/location of services in main settlements; - stigma for clients of being seen to approach services for help or negative perceptions of the services available; - identifying needs in rural areas; - lack of appropriate permanent housing/move on accommodation/ emergency accommodation; - effective joint working between agencies. Is there anything about rural areas that eases delivery of services as compared with urban areas?

Developing models of support in rural areas The research is interested in following up any ideas that could be developed in relation to delivering support to homeless people in rural areas. Is there an existing support service, either in your area, or elsewhere, that you feel tackles the needs of homeless people in rural areas in a particularly good way (Please note that this service could be delivered by statutory agencies or the voluntary or private sector)?

G Could you describe: what the service does; who provides the service and contact details.

G What is it about the service that makes it especially good, and why is it suited to a rural area?

If, hypothetically, funding was available to deliver new support services in the rural areas of your authority, what types of service would you like to see? Please list the services you would like to see? Which service would you prioritise?

G What issues would service providers need to consider whilst planning its development?

G How might the barriers we discussed earlier be overcome?

What kind of criteria do you think need to be met for a service to be suitable in rural areas?

Are there assumptions that might be made about providing services from an urban perspective that might be inappropriate in rural areas?

Anything else that we have not discussed that you would like to mention?

70 Communities Scotland Thistle House 91 Haymarket Terrace Edinburgh EH12 5HE Telephone 0131 313 0044 Fax 0131 313 2680 www.communitiesscotland.gov.uk