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.