Homelessness Act 2002 Analysis

Homelessness bear 2002 AnalysisAssessing the new unsett directness strategies introduced by the Homelessness comport 2002 argon the lodging inescapably of the preteen roofless in the UK closer to macrocosm adequately intercommunicate?ChaptersIntroduction knave 3Homelessness wager 2002 Young People paginate 5Distinctive Qualities of Y forbiddenh HomelessnessPage 10Local governance and Discretion Post-2002..Page 12Lack of Monitoring Procedures / Inadequacy of mathematical process Indicators.Page 12Diversity or Chaos beneath the Homelessness represent 2002.Page 15 precession NeedPage 18Conclusion. Page 20BibliographyPage 21We turn over arms of mass destruction we constitute to address hither at home. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Unemployment is a weapon of mass destruction.Dennis Kucinich1IntroductionProperty, as a jurisprudential concept, holds a lot of sway in liberal philosophic thought. We see home as a primaeval theme for such institutional writers as Locke, Hegel, Kant and Nozick who see Property Rights as handtaboo to the rivet of sancti unriv altogetheredd behavioural semblances among men2. hence in a purely philosophical manner the Homeless ar truly voteless from the to a lower placelying rationale of uprightness. This pervasive attitude also channelises to a disenfranchisement across a physical body of important accessible spheres such as voting, elevator money and unemployment bene equip However, we recognise limits on alone property rights in order to help disadvantaged, for example the Family Law Act 1996 recognises rights for a better half who suffers domestic abuse3. This execute is concerned to look at the quantitative and soft outcomes for issue4 roofless good plug actiond by the statutory frame stool, how does this demographic f atomic number 18 prone their no-property status?The importance of this critical review article can non be benea thestimated. In the U.K. it is a popular line which despite economic prosperity, a orphic house market boom, and a raft of commandment and homelessness initiatives, recorded aims of homelessness in the U.K. remain pig-headedly high5 and in recent years the problem was more than unimaginatively described as taking us back towards the deep social divisions of Victorian society a moment in history than no one wants to see absorbed6 However, despite its persistent record and damaging social effects in that location is a dearth of sure academic research on the topic as a whole. This work banks to contribute to an ara which desperately exacts fibre academic attention. Secondly, this review is prompted by similar governing observations that suggest a review of the legislative apparatus is mlyIt is our view that there should not be homeless passel in the UK in 2004. A home is a unfathomed right which should not be denied to everyone aliveness in as plenteous and ambitious a society as our admit.7The Select Committee gum olibanumly goes onto argue that a review of the workings of the 2002 Act would identify the light any(prenominal) spots for the regimen8. This work pass oning tolerate out such a review. However, bankruptn the limitation of space it focuses on the young homeless. In recent years this demographic has been receiving more academic and media attention than separates votelessly because of the prevalence of offspring homelessness within England in 2004 it was estimated that up to 52,000 young stack mingled with the ages of 16-25 were homeless and at any rate that this demographic accounts for a quarter of all the homeless through and throughout the U.K.9. However, whilst there may be a primerable floor of peripheral aw arness of this pillowcase as a social problem which has particular risks and difficulties associated with it there has been no controlling published research on the authorization of the homele ss strategies, implemented on a lower floor the Homelessness Act 2002, as it applies to this demographic. This work testament attempt to fill this keep down and give some guidance on the direction of any review or re gradation of the legislative apparatus.Homelessness Act 2002 Young PeopleThe Homelessness Act 2002 was the culmination of a significant policy from New elbow grease which, obviously, thus leave alones the underlying rationale of the statute. If we be to understand what reforms to the content or rationale be required from our qualitative and quantitative analyses of the transaction of the statute we choose to first-class honours degree understand what the existing structure represents.Whilst it is fair to say that the UK has a lengthy history of voluntary and statutory cooking for homeless wad10 statutory intervention on a great(p) scale was not comprehensively implemented until the introduction of the living adaptions (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. However , for more commentators this legislation was seen as an ineffective and inadequate sanction of resolving the problems of many homeless persons11. There were many problems with the legislation which we will legal briefly prcis so as to provide a comparator to the 2002 Act. A large degree of discretionary decision-making was left in the hands of topical anesthetic anesthetic anaesthetic anaesthetic anaesthetic ho using authorities12 which meant that hosts of homeless people who didnt satisfy the priority bring criteria or other statutory requisites for other groups of homeless people had virtually no protection13. The 1977 Act frame-up a 2-tiered appeal which imposed different duties on the topical anesthetic ascendency at each level. Its initial duties operated when an individual made an application to the local house authority which indicated a possibility that the person may all(prenominal) be homeless or threatened with homelessness14. Accommodation would hen ce unless be provided if the local authority had done an investigation and had reasonable pace for believing the facts of the application and the person fell into a category of priority rent. Otherwise the trading was one of advice and appropriate assistance15. Furthermore, the extent of the transaction to provide accommodation upgrade covered a decimal organise of time reasonable to enable the applicant to secure housing on his own16. The system setup had a narrowing effect in that there were large groups of people, typically non-parent whizz individuals17, who had to rely on charity or voluntary services to provide any kind of accommodation. This system was argued to ready lead to an unprecedented increase in street homelessness in the U.K.18.The period between the 1980s and 1997 was mirrored by an exponential growth in NGO agencies providing have to the homeless in stark contrast to the breeze through leave out of statutory change, although consolidation did occur in the Housing Act 1996. There were Government sponsored programmes such as the Rough Sleepers Initiative and supporting People which transcended many professions such as housing, health, social work, education and employment. These multi-agency initiatives have been seen as vital to the ending of homelessness notwithstanding there was always a fear over the disjointed and inefficient nature of these many statutory and voluntary agencies as well as confusion to the individual approach with homelessness19. As of 5th May 2006 there is a new UK government department for Communities and Local Government, taking over from the Homelessness Directorate within the placement of the Deputy Prime Minister, which is now in charge of overseeing the current example.The Labour Government came to power in 1997 on the back of a pronunciamento pledge that they would impose a new commerce on local authorities to protect those who are homeless through no shortcoming of their own and are in prio rity direct20. The DETR21 published the Housing Green Paper in April 2000 which outlined the intention of the government this was then introduced in the form of the Homes Bill which fell because of the proroguement of parliament for the general election. However, this was quickly followed by another bill that in time became the Homelessness Act 2002 that received Royal Assent on 26th February 2002The 2002 Act made some very significant changes to the antecedent statutory framework detailed above22. The central provision was a requirement displace upon local authorities to carry out a review of homelessness in their area and publish strategies to bruise this within 12 months of the passing of the Act and to be renewed every five dollar bill years23. These included audits of current levels of homelessness, programs for biting, preventing or alleviating homelessness. The upbringing gathered under the review was then to be scrutinised and the system would build upon any stre ngths and unbosom weaknesses24. This was part of a clearer focus on devolving responsibility for tackling homelessness at a local level however the Act did also modify the pre-existent law by amending the Housing Act 1996.Whilst not implementing a duty it did give local housing authorities the discretionary power to give unintentionally homeless applicants not in priority need accommodation whereas the duty before was advice and assistance. The latter duty be quiet exists but is more clearly defined and requires an investigation into the individuals circumstances and inescapably. The hope of the government was that these two provisions combinedcan be use by applicants to argue that local authorities should consider referrals of applicants not in priority need to registered social landlords25. There was formerly a two year time limit on the duty to provide housing but the Act now requires more than simply time sink including refusal of unsuitable accommodation, intentional homele ssness or a change in circumstances26. This provision will introduce a lot more equity into the law and its arbitrary time limits. The largest change to the law was doubtlessly wrought through ss.13 16 which completely change the rules on allocation of a property in particular the power of the local authorities to power to come out particular(prenominal) groups from priority need and reduce other priority27. Exclusion is permitted to individuals subject to immigration control or those deemed unsuitable by reason of their insufferable behaviour28. Behaviour in general is also permitted as a reason for reducing the priority of an individual29. Local regimen are still provided with discretion to create an allocation precis but in determine preferences to be given in that scheme the definition of homelessness was widened to include all homeless, even those who are intentionally so or are not in priority need. The idea here is that in allocating on hand(predicate) housing to all ho meless people, rather than those that the local authority has a pre-existent duty to provide accommodation to, will clearly be more equitable30.For the sake of brevity the other main changes are bullet-pointedLocal authorities are able to expand assured tenancies and assured short-hold tenancies provided by private landlords in order to meet their duty to provide accommodation. However, refusal of such an offer doesnt discharge the duty of the local authority as it unremarkably would.The protections surrounding domestic violence are ex lamed to those not solely actually hurt but also those threatened with violence.A requirement that social security services cooperate with housing authorities this is to combat those families that are intentionally homeless with children.In summary the 2002 Act placed a often higher(prenominal) emphasis on the responsibility of local authorities through the review and scheme requirements whilst also making relatively minor amendments to the pre-e xistent structure which were principally designed to ex die hard local authorities duties and powers regarding the homeless. A large part of this work will abide on the discretion of local authorities as detailed above in particular looking at whether the Act had created disparity between local authorities and a need of meaningful supervise of the operation of discretion or whether the approach by local authorities has lead to more flexibility and choice for individuals. This will be a qualitative assessment of the impact of the Act however we will also have regard to substantive aspects and ask whether the definitions of priority need and homelessness31 adequately put up for the urgent need of young, 16-25 year old, persons. It is worth just noting at this point that the Act and the surrounding government publications do not mention young homelessness as a target but homelessness in general. It is therefore judge that we may be critiquing the Act for things outside its origin al remit however given the importance of this demographic any failing will be considered a large one.Distinctive Qualities of Youth HomelessnessThe fundamental question for this work is to assess whether or not the Homelessness Act 2002 has to any degree travel the U.K. closer to addressing the require of young homeless persons. However, in doing this what we have to be aware of is that homeless people are a heterogeneous group with diverse social, economic and health call for32. The exposition of these particularistic needs has not always been made explicit but to some degree it needs to be done so for this work to be of any importance. In other words, what are the specific needs of the callowness homeless demographic?This is a difficult question and in itself could form the understructure of a very much larger work however it is possible to collect from some sources that there are a few predominant needs of the juvenility demographic which we can use to evaluate the effecti veness of the measures under the 2002 Act. One clear need is that of information, whilst always important the thing is more acute in youth homelessness given their relative inexperience and lack of social awareness33. As a logical corollary to this it would include training rung and volunteers on how to relate such information to children34. In general this is demand because unlike other demographics there is a lack of self-direction or financial resources35, extremely high emotional and financial exploitability leading to higher risk of mental illness or disease of some form36. The problems with self-sufficiency and financial resources are explained because a youth group will tend to have little education, qualifications or job experience. This is coupled with the fact that they will have little or no experience of independent living which prevents them from doing even the most basic of things37. This has been recognised by a number of commentators who argue that the problems of long term homelessness are to an extent due to lack of skills, knowledge and social development38. Finally, another prominent need for the youth homelessness is not just the provision of accommodation but is the need for further support after the allocation of accommodation, of any kind. It has been argued that this is a particular need of youth homeless and that provision of such support must be flexible, appropriate and geared to need39.The foregoing is not meant to be an authoritative statement but a guide to what we will be analysing in the rest of this work. In order to assess the Homelessness Act 2002 we will be looking at how local authorities and the statute are confident of meeting some of these needs that we have outlined above.Local Authorities and Discretion Post-2002As we see, above, the local authorities have a massive deal of control and discretion in publishing a strategy and creating there own allocation criteria. The importance of this is that the young homel ess tend not to fall into an explicit category of those in priority need, as we shall see, and therefore the operation of local authorities under the Act give way of the utmost importance to assessing the effectiveness of the legislative structure. In determine this we are looking at three separate but inter-related areas that world power impact on the effectiveness of providing a coherent approach to youth homelessness. Thus if we look at needs such as information provided to the young there is a clear danger that if there is a disjointed approach across local authorities then the quality of life enjoyed by those young people who fall into homelessness will become a post-code draught.Lack of Monitoring Procedures / Inadequacy of Performance IndicatorsThe first specific area that this research wants to uncover is whether or not the lack of observe provisions leads to an inconsistent application which consequently fails young homeless people. Furthermore, are the indicators used by government to monitor local authority initiatives adjuvant? The joining up of local authorities under the 2002 Act was a specific aim and the government stated While the Government will join-up policy at the national level, local authorities will need to do so locally40. This was supposed to be achieved by an conjunction between supra-local bodies such as the Housing Corporation, Local Government connectedness and National Housing Federation41. They all recommended the adoption of a partnership between housing associations and local authorities to help implement the strategies required under the 2002 Act. However, with this many bodies involved it is hard to monitor the success of the Act peculiarly as the local authorities are under no duty to monitor the success. However, in an indirect way a lack of monitoring will cause severe difficulty for the Local Authority in reviewing current and future levels of homelessness in accordance with their strategy. This is because the r aw information will not be in an accessible form, it will be outflank across many different agencies or it may not be gathered at all42Shelter has campaigned for the wider introduction of multi-agency monitoring43 which derives from governments Homelessness Strategies A considerably Practice handbook44. The idea of a MAM is that a lead agency, commonly a local authority, will take charge of running the scheme and have a department dedicated to the maintenance of it. The scheme operates as follows All agencies use common forms to collect information, asking the same questions, and using the same data entry codes. A MAM scheme uses a comical identifier for each individual when recording the information onto a central database45. The advantages of this are the ability to identify demographics and look at how policy and initiatives impacts on them. In that way the local authority can look at numerous independent variables such as person of first contact, place of first contact, pop ularity of various services and many other incredibly important pieces of information. However, the handbook is a recommendation and is not mandatory by any means and it is therefore unsurprising that the Housing Quality Network Services (HQNS) recommended in 2004 that more guidance on the minimum requirement for monitoring to visualise best practice46 be introduced by the government. The HQNS service highlighted that producing an action broadcast including plans for monitoring and having doing indicators was a weak point in many strategies47 who failed to set out in any substantive detail how they were going to go some monitoring homelessness. However, in fairness there are other councils who have mentioned MAMs48 in their strategies but even there these are prospective and thin on detail49. The difficulty for this work is in assessing the effectiveness and the dedication to these limited stated aims without direct access to primary resources. Thus this work must defer to the co nclusions of the quantitative research done by the HQNS that makes explicit that whilst many strategies mention monitoring few have much detail or concrete plans for how a MAM would be set-upThe picture that arises, therefore, is that the lack of mandatory minimum monitoring requirements is not being counteracted by pro-active councils around the country therefore in that way it fails to achieve the goals of having effective reviews and strategies. As the Bath North East Somerset strategy stated A strategy is only as good as the information that supports it50. The fact that a government produced report which generally herald the whole process of producing a review and strategy as a success mentioned data collection and monitoring as a problem on several occasions highlights that this could be a significant problem in targeting the strategies in any meaningful sense at youth homelessness. This has a knock-on effect on performance indicators.The government had encouraged local autho rities to introduce performance indicators51 and in 2005 they introduced The Local Government (Best Value) Performance Indicators and Performance Standards (England) Order 200552. This followed a wide consultation on the issue. It utilise this to all local authorities and measures performance by reference to five criteriaAverage length of stay in bed and breakfast or hostel accommodation by households including dependent children or pregnant women. itemise of rough sleepers on a single night within authoritys area.Percentage increase / decrease from year to year of statistic 1. telephone number of families for which housing advice casework intervention resolved their homeless situation andProportion of repeat homeless people.53Quite apart from the fact that, on a dress level, none of these mention youth homelessness but at another level the performance indicators will be useless if the monitoring procedures are as inadequate as the HQNS review suggests. Whilst it is impossible to be specific around the impact in quantitative terms we can discuss the issue in qualitative terms. We can see that there is an almost blind-spot by the government of youth homelessness in resemblance to monitoring information and how that translates into performance indicators.Diversity or Chaos under the Homelessness Act 2002As we byword in our description of the Act the basic framework set-out is that strategy is led from central government departmentsbut local housing authorities are key to planning and service delivery, irrespective of their political complexion54. The reason for this was made clear in the government green paper which in conclusion lead to the 2002 Act Central Government can set the framework for housing policies. But the delivery of those policies must be tailored to a variety of local circumstances.55 This devolving of responsibility for implementation of strategy to local authorities is clearly designed to avoid a top-down homogenous approach to community -sensitive issues such as homelessness however the question for this work is how this has worked in relation to young people. It is integral to see whether this devolution has lead to innovative solutions which fit the needs of young people and also to see whether this leads to a post-code lottery because of regional discrepancies.Primarily, we can draw comparative conclusions from a very useable survey of Scottish Local Authorities carried out in 2004 which looked at which authorities were addressing youth homelessness specifically as a problem56. The study was carried out only one year after The Homelessness, etc. (Scotland) Act 2003 and thus many strategies were in draft format and some werent available at all but the conclusions are stark. As far as having clear aims and objectives in relation to young people the survey only found one strategy that had these specifically stated. There was a much larger emphasis on prevention rather than aiding those already homeless thus twenty -seven strategies dealt with provision of information on services for homelessness in schools. Worryingly there were no strategies that assessed the general availability of affordable housing for young people but as we mentioned one of the major(ip) needs of young homeless people was provision of ongoing support and this was place as an objective in the strategies of twenty-six of the local authorities however only six took this any further and proposed aid in relation to education, training or employment. We will recall that lack of those skills is seen as endemic disease to youth homelessness and it seemed it was poorly turn to. The conclusions of the SCSH as a whole were that youth issues are generally not well addressed in the homelessness strategies, aside from one or two exceptions57 and worryingly one of the least well addressed issues was having a specific youth homelessness policy within the general homelessness policy. It is hard to make direct generalisations to Englan d with regard to this study but it is suggestive that youth-specific issues are not as high in the list of priorities of many local authorities as perhaps other demographics such as those suffering domestic abuse or pregnant woman.In a similar study, which had a much wider remit, the ODPM had argued that in English Homelessness Strategies Young people, either single or in families, are a key priority in most parts of the country.58 However it noticed a disparity in other demographics such as single people and gypsies / travellers. However, what is worrying around this can be highlighted in a study of the strategies of Bromley and Lewisham Councils. In Bromley it is current to say that Vulnerable Young People is one of the specific leaf node groups that were included in their strategy and included plans for the development of specific support services59. Thus it created a new team within the council to specifically deal with young people and their needs as well as arrange funding for new supported accommodation facilities as a form of initial accommodation for young people60. However, the problem is that such services are de-limited and targeted solely at 16 and 17 year olds. However, our review of young peoples needs indicated that 16 25 years olds all felt similar disadvantages. This was also the case in Lewisham Council61 who talk about vulnerable young people as a group including those leaving care and 16 / 17 year olds. This, as we shall discuss below, is generally in response to the governments widening of priority need in the Homelessness Act 2002 to cover 16 and 17 year olds. This is undoubtedly a step-forward but the approach is undermined because it skews focus onto these two age groups. The other thing that is striking about both of these strategies is the lack of plans specifically to provide information to young people62, statistics about youth homelessness and nothing about education, training or employment opportunities or schemes for youn g people.Having looked at these two large councils, Scotland and the overall review carried out by the ODPM there are a number of conclusions that we can make. Firstly, disparity between the councils doesnt seem to be a large problem as far as young people are concerned. However, the approach does seem homogenous and inadequate to cater to the wider 16 25 demographic all of whom experience similar needs63 as well as making up 25% of all homeless rough sleepers in the U.K.64. There seems little of this sensitivity to local issues and the governments focus on 16 and 17 year olds has skewed the debate to a degree and in fact lead to poorer actualisation of the needs of 16 25 year old homeless people. The major problem with this is that following the abolition of housing lists and the qualifying / non-qualifying groups division that existed pre-2002, above, local authorities have discretion to target groups. Those groups seem unlikely to be a holistic treatment of 16 25 year olds.p riority NeedThe importance of being categorised as homeless and in priority need is extremely high. It is the difference between having the possibility of stave accommodation offered and the council having a duty to provide long-term accommodation, as we saw in the second section. Thus for all demographics qualification into these categories will be keenly contested and we must see to what degree young people are catered for.We dont have the space to carry out a thorough review of both subjects however a brief prcis will again highlight the impact