homelessness

The Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee agreed to conduct an inquiry into the progress towards the 2012 commitment in order that it could feed into the preparation for the legal requirement being placed on local authorities.

This approach allowed the Committee to engage positively with local authorities, housing associations, the voluntary sector and the Scottish Government to consider the achievement of the commitment and its impact on homeless people in Scotland.

Report that highlights how 40% of current levels of public expenditure could have been avoided had there been a greater focus on helping people avoid recourse to more expensive interventions.

An independent evaluation of Shelter's Children's Services.

In 2004, Shelter launched its Million Children Campaign to raise awareness of the impact of homelessness on children and families. In response to issues highlighted by the campaign, Shelter made a proactive decision to develop a range of pilot services for children, young people and families, that could test new ways of working to prevent child homelessness and to support children who were already homeless to achieve better outcomes.

Paper that sets out to quantify the costs to government associated with the loss of a home.

These costs can be aggregated and used to make the case for increased funding for preventative measures (so-called 'spend to save' arguments), for the creation of protocols and procedures to reduce the risk of problems leading to loss of home, and to estimate the savings which might arise from such arrangements, as well as to help assess the impact of policy changes.

Research that aimed to investigate the nature and extent of youth homelessness in England, and specifically to find out:

This report comes at a time when the UK government has outlined its main policy intentions and its strategy to reduce poverty. Although the statistics presented in this report still almost entirely reflect the policies of the previous government, the Labour record is the Coalition inheritance.

This commentary discusses the implications of that record for the current government in the light of its commitments on child poverty and social mobility set out in strategy documents published in 2011.

Report that looks at the close link between homelessness and re-offending and how homelessness increases the chances of re-offending.

Paper that summarises findings from four projects examining the interaction between homelessness and other support needs.

It also looks at services for people with complex needs and suggests ways that policy and practice can more effectively tackle homelessness.

Guide that provides an introduction to housing rights for lesbian, gay and bisexual people. It provides information about renting accommodation, people's rights as a tenant and what to do if at risk of becoming homeless or are homeless.

The guide will also be useful if you for a worker or a family member who is offering support to a lesbian, gay or bisexual person.

Review with the objective to examine what the Social Fund currently consists of and explore how it operates; and consider whether the Fund could be made more responsive to Scottish Government priorities and look at the possible consequences of devolving responsibility for it.

The review was completed in May 2010 and presents evidence relating to the Social Fund and discusses the Scottish and UK Government policy context which was operational at the time of writing. There have been significant developments in UK Government policy since then which are not covered in this report.