Scotland’s journey to embedding homelessness prevention in public services has reached an important stage. With legal duties enshrined in law, we have just over two years to work out what needs to happen next to ensure these new duties can work effectively in practice.

We are now just past the halfway point of the 15 homelessness prevention pilots funded by the Scottish Government; the second quarter report has been published, and the early signs are promising.

So, what have we learned so far?

The pilots are much more than just testing out how to routinely ask people new questions about their housing situation. They are a real opportunity to understand what it takes to make early intervention consistent, effective and sustainable.

The pilots include health, police, justice, education, social work and housing professionals. Employability services, jobcentres, libraries, community groups and a wide swathe of 3rd sector partners are also involved. The breadth of involvement is critical: the responsibility of identifying problems that lead to housing instability cannot sit within housing services alone.

Non-housing services are growing in confidence in identifying factors that may indicate housing instability and knowing how to respond, in many cases leading to early intervention pre-crisis.

Some of the strongest pilot examples so far have highlighted the value of asking simple questions, creating clear referral pathways into services that can help households and ensuring local service partners have the ability and capacity to act quickly in a coordinated way.

North Lanarkshire, for example, is piloting a model with a range of partners identifying those at housing risk and then using a multi-agency model to coordinate preventative interventions for individual households. The pilot feedback so far has shown that interventions do not have to be seismic or long-term. Mediation, benefits advice, tenancy sustainment, repairs or one-off funds can mitigate or even prevent a housing crisis.

The Prevention Ecosystem

At the same time, the pilots have highlighted common practical challenges which will need to be overcome for full implementation of the new duties to be a success.

• Data systems: These are fragmented, making it difficult for partners to build a shared picture of housing risk and coordinate activity. Information-sharing agreements can also be difficult to establish and operate effectively.
• Capacity: With a wide range of services involved, implementation means considering staff awareness of housing & homelessness risk factors, existing workloads/staff capacity and the strengths and weaknesses of existing referral pathways.   
• Variable demand: Some pilots have struggled to generate referrals, whereas others have faced very high levels of demand. Both scenarios present different challenges.

The pilots are a real opportunity to learn how we can embed a system which truly puts the person at the centre, moving to a culture of curiosity, early intervention and joint working as standard. With less than six months left of the pilots, the next few months will guide our ability to reduce the harms of homelessness for the future. Then we face the hard but exciting work of rolling learning and practice out across Scotland.

Having a strong, clear plan for implementation is vital for rolling learning and practice out across Scotland, setting out the infrastructure and culture we’re aiming for, clarifying national and local responsibilities, addressing the challenges emerging from the pilots and, crucially, ensuring there is sufficient investment to make this work.

Crisis has long championed these changes because we truly believe that a focus on early intervention can be transformational for ending homelessness in Scotland.

We hope to see the First Minister highlight this workplan in the upcoming Programme for Government as one of the most effective ways of ending homelessness for good.