I am well into my study tour now having spent time in London, Glasgow, Brussels, Washington, New York and now Boston and there have been consistent messages from all locations. These messages include:
- the need for high level mandate, whether that is legislation or Prime Minister/Presidential leadership to drive service delivery reform and force a range of agencies to think about their practice and responsibility in ending homelessness.
- the importance of leadership at the highest level within government departments seeing that ending homelessness is part of their business, which relates back to the previous point. All people i have interviewed identified the importance of those leaders respecting each other enough to engage in frank discussions to work out more effective ways of collaborating to end homelessness.
- establishing the shared vision and strategy to end homelessness, using models of service delivery that are based on sound evidence and that have been proven to be effective at ending homelessness.
These three points reflect the impact of the many years that these countries have had national homelessness strategies in place, supported a the highest level in government to make a real difference for some of the most vulnerable members of each community.
Whilst everyone that I have interviewed thus far identified real challenges in getting the systems in place to wrap around reach client, the fact that all agencies had a responsibility to do this was never in question from either the NGO side or government side of the business of ending homelessness.
The importance of research to support the development of evidence based practice was reinforced in every meeting that I had and really got me thinking about how important it is going to be to enhance the capture of our Australian experience as we progress down the path of ending homelessness. Understanding the context that the Australian experience has on these international models will be important to understand and further explore.
So, whilst there is no quick and easy fix to get all the services needed to end homelessness collaborating and working in an integrated fashion, I am heartened by what I am thinking of as the "impact of many years of national homelessness strategy" that clearly identifies and places responsibilities on many agencies to partner, collaborate and deliver stronger models of service delivery that focus on ending homelessness.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Reflections thus far
I have now spent time in London, Glasgow and Washington and the most overwhelming thing that strikes me is how protected Australia has been from the impact of the GFC. In London, services reported funding cuts since 2008 with decisions being made about pay cuts versus program cuts so that not for profits are able to keep a footprint on the ground and keep services running. The same was the story in Glasgow.
It was interesting though in London - you can really see the impact of many years of investment in responding to rough sleepers. Visible homelessness - rough sleepers - was not that visible any more. Many of you will know that I lived in London for 5 years in the 80s where rough sleepers and beggars were on most street corners. That is not the story now, so clearly, the investment over the longterm does make a real difference to some of the most vulnerable.
The investment of social and affordable housing is an integral part of the homelessness response in both London and Glasgow. Many programs have been established to either provide transitional housing or permanent housing. Importantly, transitional housing is still seen as a viable and good program in the UK, in part because they don't have enough social housing to meet demand if everyone received permanent social housing. The story is clearly the same the world over!
So, whilst the GFC is clearly impacting, and experts predict a rise in homelessness, at the moment, you can see the success of programs in reducing the number of rough sleepers and programs that assist people into housing for the longterm.
Partnerships and integration are driven by government at the highest level. After many years of homelessness strategy, people had to struggle to think about how they engaged with health or disability services, mostly because whilst there were still struggles, it had to happen, so it did happen. Again, this is a reflection of services and countries being so much further advanced in their strategy to end homelessness.
An important note to make here was that NGOs did form strategic alliances and partnerships but only did that when they could complement each others business - NEVER when they were being forced down a path which ultimately could mean that they could have a reduction in service footprint themselves. Competition policy came up in discussion, and the impact of government procurement processes were very similar to many of the discussion I was having through the Homelessness Community Alliance before I set off on my travels.
I met with several larger services who had formed partnerships / mergers with smaller services where there was mutual benefit - programs complimented each other and added value. This had the concept of enabling rather than engulfing, something I will think some more about before I come back home and start to think about how I can use this information to benefit our services across NSW.
It is too early to make any real comments about the USA other than to say I am so relieved to be Australian! Poverty is very visible on the streets of Washington, with many people (mainly black) begging on street corners or camping in the parks in broad daylight. It is quite confronting and I find it very sad that the land of the free can have such extremes - wealth and poverty in equal measure.
I have now spent time in London, Glasgow and Washington and the most overwhelming thing that strikes me is how protected Australia has been from the impact of the GFC. In London, services reported funding cuts since 2008 with decisions being made about pay cuts versus program cuts so that not for profits are able to keep a footprint on the ground and keep services running. The same was the story in Glasgow.
It was interesting though in London - you can really see the impact of many years of investment in responding to rough sleepers. Visible homelessness - rough sleepers - was not that visible any more. Many of you will know that I lived in London for 5 years in the 80s where rough sleepers and beggars were on most street corners. That is not the story now, so clearly, the investment over the longterm does make a real difference to some of the most vulnerable.
The investment of social and affordable housing is an integral part of the homelessness response in both London and Glasgow. Many programs have been established to either provide transitional housing or permanent housing. Importantly, transitional housing is still seen as a viable and good program in the UK, in part because they don't have enough social housing to meet demand if everyone received permanent social housing. The story is clearly the same the world over!
So, whilst the GFC is clearly impacting, and experts predict a rise in homelessness, at the moment, you can see the success of programs in reducing the number of rough sleepers and programs that assist people into housing for the longterm.
Partnerships and integration are driven by government at the highest level. After many years of homelessness strategy, people had to struggle to think about how they engaged with health or disability services, mostly because whilst there were still struggles, it had to happen, so it did happen. Again, this is a reflection of services and countries being so much further advanced in their strategy to end homelessness.
An important note to make here was that NGOs did form strategic alliances and partnerships but only did that when they could complement each others business - NEVER when they were being forced down a path which ultimately could mean that they could have a reduction in service footprint themselves. Competition policy came up in discussion, and the impact of government procurement processes were very similar to many of the discussion I was having through the Homelessness Community Alliance before I set off on my travels.
I met with several larger services who had formed partnerships / mergers with smaller services where there was mutual benefit - programs complimented each other and added value. This had the concept of enabling rather than engulfing, something I will think some more about before I come back home and start to think about how I can use this information to benefit our services across NSW.
It is too early to make any real comments about the USA other than to say I am so relieved to be Australian! Poverty is very visible on the streets of Washington, with many people (mainly black) begging on street corners or camping in the parks in broad daylight. It is quite confronting and I find it very sad that the land of the free can have such extremes - wealth and poverty in equal measure.
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