EXECUTIVE SUMMARY / In one short paragraph please describe this project is about, what it has achieved, and why it is delivering excellence.

Heralded as the sector leader in the prevention of homelessness, North Ayrshire Council has successfully transformed both the culture of the organisation and the relationship with our customers in order to deliver a customer focused performance led service.By changing the service structure, shifting resources from crisis response to early intervention, we have reduced the levels of homeless presentations by 49% over the last four years. By delivering timely intervention and personalised housing options advice, the service empowers people to make informed housing decisions based on need and aspiration. The outcomes of this approach have attracted national recognition, with the Council being highlighted as an exemplary service by the Scottish Government. Other headline outcomes include the eradication of bed and breakfast usage as temporary provision and greater availability of social rented housing for waiting list applicants.

PLANNING / · a clear rationale, defined processes and focus on stakeholder needs
· contributes to organisation’s goals and addresses current or emerging challenges

NAC experienced a 140% increase in homeless presentations between 1996 and 2003, compared to a national average of 27%. This placed considerable pressure on temporary provision and social rented housing, resulting in an over reliance in bed and breakfast accommodation. In addition, the quality of service was deteriorating as resources were stretched to capacity, the result of which was an increased length of time to complete homeless assessments and losing contact with 28% of our customers during the homeless process.

The Scottish Government had set a target to abolish “Priority Need” by 2012; this gave an additional 200 households within North Ayrshire the right to an offer of social rented housing. In 2003-2004, the Council was not in a position to meet the 2012 target; waiting list allocations to homeless people amounted to 50% (600) of all social housing lets; the fifth highest in Scotland. In addition, the Scottish Government had placed the prevention of homelessness as one of five strategic drivers to be delivered through Local Authority Homelessness Strategies. We recognised the need for a radical shift in the way services were being delivered if we were to meet our statutory obligations and deliver services which met the needs of our customers.

Elected Members supported the vision to redirect resources from crisis response to early intervention; recognising that in preventing crisis, there is a greater opportunity to keep families together, building resilience and reducing the risk of homelessness. The Council identified one clear objective driven by the Single Outcome agreement (SOA); to reduce levels of homelessness. The key priorities for the community planning partners in relation to homelessness were agreed through the development of the Local Housing Strategy, which again has homelessness prevention as one of its 5 strategic outcomes.

In order to understand the increasing levels of homelessness we undertook an analysis of homeless data during 2004. This determined that the highest level of applications (45%) were from single households aged 16-25 years of which 59% were homeless as the result of being asked to leave the home of friends/family.

Having established our target group, we undertook a review of service provision by partner authorities within the Scottish Housing Best Value Network, coupled with a visit to Watford, England - heralded as a beacon Authority by the Office of the Depute Prime Minister. This benchmarking identified areas of good practice around youth prevention activities.

Utilising existing resources, we undertook a youth prevention pilot during 2005. Following extensive training, housing support officers undertook prevention activity with 16 and 17 year olds threatened with homelessness from the family home. A home visit was undertaken to determine the prevalent issues, with a view to resolving conflict and returning the young person home. Mediation or support provision was offered if required. In addition, housing options advice was given to ensure young people were on housing waiting lists and could access the Private Rented Sector through the Council Rent Deposit Guarantee Scheme (RDS) (where appropriate). We were successful in returning 92% of young people to the family home during the pilot.

The pilot review incorporated the findings of staff and concluded that there was unmet housing advice and support needs within the community, with people unsure how to access services. We determined that in excess of 50% of the presenting households were not at immediate risk of homelessness. What was required was access to advice in order to plan for future housing need - there was a perception that homelessness was the only way to access mainstream housing. It was evident that crisis aversion through delivery of housing advice was successful; the prevention work was therefore extended to all presenting16-25 year olds.

Given the above success, the Council now had to determine how services should be structured to maximise homelessness prevention through early intervention and delivery of effective housing options advice and information.

We appointed external consultants to review the existing homeless provision in consultation with customers and stakeholders and to co-ordinate a service options appraisal as a conclusion to the review. This resulted in the appointment of the centralised Homeless Prevention service during October 2007 which replaced the existing decentralised service delivered by generic housing staff. The new team would; deliver housing options advice, facilitate access to the RDS, undertake homeless assessments and sign post or refer to wider services such as housing support, money advice and temporary accommodation.

  • The service restructure set out to achieve the following key objectives:
  • Fewer people become homeless (Objective SOA , Target 5% per annum)
  • 88% of people deemed to be in priority need by March 2009 (Scottish Gvt target – set within Performance Management Framework - PMF)
  • To reduce levels of lost contact and withdrawn applications
  • To deliver sustainable housing options through provision of advice and information, taking pressure off mainstream stock (Monitored via a new Access database – reported through PMF)
  • Toeradicate the use of bed and breakfast, reducing temporary accommodation costs (Target - Homelessness strategy 2003/06 & 2007/10)

DELIVERING / · implemented in all relevant areas and across all the required stakeholders
· carried out in a structured and logical way , using robust and sustainable methods

As identified above commitment at a corporate level and across the community planning partners had been agreed, stakeholders and customers had been involved in the planning and options appraisal stages, the next challenge was to recruit staff with the necessary skills to deliver the prevention agenda.

The staff team were recruited based on their skills and understanding of the prevention agenda and undertook a structured suite of skills and knowledge based training over a six week period. The training involved customers, local stakeholders and national service providers. The entire team received the same training irrespective of grade; this ensured a shared vision, a clear understanding of priorities, policies and procedures and established a strong team identity. The performance management framework provided clear measures to staff and as all staff were delivering services within set targets this enabled the Council to achieve national and strategic outcomes. (e.g. Homeless and in priority need – 88 %,). In addition, the team were trained to National Standard level two for advice and information provision.

By the completion of training, stakeholders, customers and local services had a clear understanding of the new service remit, as they had been involved in the training process and the new team had spent time in each of the service areas across the local authority getting to know both customers and local service providers. A central office location was procured within the town of Irvine as this is where the majority of homeless presentations historically had been made and an advertising campaign to promote the new service was launched across North Ayrshire.

An audit framework to scrutinise the service was put in place as was a monitoring system to ensure physical location was not a barrier to accessing the service. Travel warrants were dispersed across the local housing offices to be given to presenting customers and a freephone telephone number was widely promoted.

The first six months performance review resulted in a change in service delivery as it evidenced that whilst homeless presentations were falling (21%), 93% of those presenting were deemed to be homeless. In contrast the advice and assistance officers, providing housing options advice had responded to 1,232 approaches of which only 2% went on to present as homeless. There were 6 officers delivering assessments and only 2 providing housing options advice, therefore staff were struggling to keep up with demand. As all staff had undertaken the same training we had the ability to quickly change service delivery without retraining. It was agreed that every approach to the prevention service would be housing options appraised; households would be presented with a tailored range of information and choices, with officers working to try and meet aspirational need. Homelessness was determined as the final option only if accommodation could not be secured using an alternative route. The impact of this approach can be seen in the results section.

INNOVATION + LEADING PRACTICE / ·Demonstrates leading practice, and is capable of replication elsewhere
·Achieves genuine innovation or new ways of working

The NAC Housing Options and prevention approach has been heralded by the Scottish Government as an exemplary service, resulting in the Minister for Housing and Communities actively promoting the model and making direct recommendation for other Local Authorities to visit North Ayrshire to review the model. To date, the Council has hosted good practice events for 23 Local Authorities and two voluntary organisations.The content of these events has varied dependant on the needs of each visiting group and has included sharing of; vision, policy, procedures, performance management information, organisational charts, budget information and offering follow up support and advice as required. In addition, the Council’s approach has been shared with elected members from other Councils and we have delivered presentations and workshops at various national events. The Council has been selected by the Scottish Government as a “Hub” Authority to mentor other Local Authorities to develop their housing options and prevention approach.

To our knowledge North Ayrshire Council is the first Scottish Council to develop and deliver this housing options model, refocusing the entire service on prevention activity which has resulted in the highest reduction in homeless presentations across Scotland.

The reducing levels of homelessness has resulted in the service returning temporary housing to mainstream stock as they are no longer required and the Council increasing allocations to the mainstream waiting list from 50% to 75% of lets due to reduced demand from homeless people. In addition through the provision of housing options the Council are assisting 300 households annually to access the private rented sector through the in-house RDS.

RESULTS + IMPACT / · a convincing mix of customer and internal performance measures
· clear line of sight to the delivery of better outcomes for communities
· a full range of relevant results– either already achieved or with potential to deliver over time

Cost of centralised provision

The costs of the Homeless prevention service amount to £170,581 per annum. However, we recognised that in order to meet the 2012 priority need targets, reduce homelessness, improve service provision whilst enabling people to make informed choices about housing options, a spend to save investment was necessary. The increased approaches to the service has resulted in a reduction in costs per case from £136 prior to restructure to £107 afterwards; the restructure has provided best value by being cost effective demonstrating values

In addition due to reducing demand, 22 units of temporary accommodation have been returned for mainstream housing use and there is no longer a requirement to use bed and breakfast accommodation. This has resulted in reduced staffing costs of £80,500 and maintenance costs of £40,678. Bed and Breakfast has reduced from £51,000 in 08/09 to zero. This amounts to a saving of £172,178 annually.

The graphs below highlight the outcomes of the reprovisioning strategy.

Table 1 Table 2 Table 3

Fewer people become homeless Housing Options Outcomes Increasing priority need

Table 4 Table 5 Table 6

Allocation of social housing Reduced levels of lost contact Approaches to the service

By refocusing resources to early intervention the Council has become the sector leader in reducing levels of homelessness. Table 2 demonstrates that with timely intervention, the majority of households can be assisted to remain within their current accommodation, circumventing the trauma, cost and upheaval of homelessness.

Thereducing levels of homelessness has also assisted the Council in meeting the abolition of priority need target 12 months early, one of only a handful of Councils to do so.

Pressure has been reduced from the mainstream waiting list as fewer allocations are required for homeless people, therefore reducing the length of time people need to wait for an offer of social rented housing which in turn makes housing from the waiting list a realistic solution to people presenting for a housing options assessment, therefore reducing the risk of homelessness.

In addition, the proactive, person centred approach has ensured that contact is maintained with customers through to conclusion of their application, again with performance exceeding the Scottish average. In addition the average length of time to assess homeless cases has dropped from 17 days in 2002/03 to 11 days during 2010/11.

The restructure to a centralised provision has not acted as a barrier to people as the levels of approaches to the team has increased, with the majority of households accessing advice and alternative housing options. This is evident within table 6.

Customer appraisal

Customer consultation is integral to the ongoing review and development of homelessness services. Below is a range of comments provided by customers over the last twelve months:

“Found the people I spoke to of great help, especially as I had no idea of where to start.”

“Once I approached the team they walked me through the process.”

“For me, I had no clue as to how this system worked. I found the whole team to be very efficient and quick to respond to any queries I had. If it was not for them, I may well have found myself sleeping rough. Personally I would not change a thing and would like to thank them for all their help and assistance.”

“I am very pleased with the way the Rent Deposit Scheme helped me and my daughter secure a home within a couple of weeks. I didn’t want to take my 7 year old daughter into a Hostel through health issues and the officer that handled my case did so in an excellent manner and time scale.”

“Felt a lot of advice was provided”

“Everything was done better than I expected and quicker”

“Staff couldn’t have done anything more for me, have taken the pressure and stress away”

The development of the North Ayrshire Council model for preventing homelessness was driven by a will to improve performance and achieve better outcomes for our customers by delivering services which meet people’s needs. On reflection, not only have we achieved what we set out to at inception of the process by way of performance, we have become the sector leaders in this area and have driven performance up across the country by sharing the model and our journey with other Scottish local authorities and voluntary organisations.

COSLA EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2012 Page | 1