WIDER POLICIES
Commentary on Advice and Support Policy

Achieving a consistently high standard across the country

It is widely agreed that advice and support have a key role to play in both homelessness prevention and in helping people out of homelessness and all local authorities now have a duty to provide such services.  In this context, local authorities in Great Britain have a duty to offer advice and assistance to all households who are officially recognised as homeless.

Scottish and Welsh advice and support policy include national quality standards which should in theory ensure that the advice and assistance is of a consistently high standard.

In England, however, there appears to be no such national quality standard.  The issue that therefore arises is whether the advice and assistance is of a consistently high standard across the country.

A comprehensive service for all ages

A second issue is whether homelessness advice and support is sufficiently integrated with wider advice and support.  For young adults, comprehensive national advice and support frameworks have been developed which incorporate homelessness (e.g. Connexions in England) such that there is access to all services from a single point of entry and levels of personal support tailored to individual needs.  For older adults, however, there are no obvious mechanisms for integrating the advice and support on homelessness (the responsibility of local authorities) with, for example, work-related advice (the responsibility of DWP's Jobcentre Plus).

Page last modified on 20/06/2006 at 16:50