Every Conversation Matters: Embedding housing stability across public services in Scotland

The "Ask and Act" pilots are running throughout 2026 and shift the focus from reactive crisis management to a collective public responsibility, where services across health, justice, and the community work together to identify housing risks early.  

The recently-published first quarterly report highlights a period of intense mobilisation, offering vital insights into how Scotland can move toward a national "Everyone’s Business" model, and demonstrates significant commitment to change. 

Shaping services around people 

One of the most significant early findings is a burgeoning culture change within frontline services. Staff want to move away from rigid, emergency-driven action toward proactive and "curious conversations" where nuance and wellbeing matter more than tick-boxes. These pilots have shown that preventing homelessness  needs to rely heavily on "soft skills"—such as active listening, empathy, and relationship-building—rather than just transactional signposting.  

This lines up with the original concept of “ask and act” coming from people with lived experience – “seeing the person and not the experience”, i.e. not just to ask about housing need, but to ask individuals what support is most important to help them.  

In sectors like health and justice, joint training and multidisciplinary planning have helped staff unfamiliar with the housing "ecosystem" build the confidence and skills to raise housing issues during routine appointments. And there has been progress For example, the "Early Doors" pilot successfully embedded housing "Asks" into routine social work and health visiting interactions, demonstrating that early identification is most effective when it feels like a natural extension of professional care. 

Hurdles of Mobilisation 

Despite this enthusiasm, the pilots have faced systemic challenges. The system being developed is complex, cutting across traditional service lines and creating potential for overlap and duplication. And indeed the situations and vulnerabilities of some service users have posed challenges. Soft skills have proved critical to developing strong partner commitment.  And through effective co-ordination, joint planning and good communication progress has been made, creating the opportunity to transform delivery. 

Frontline services face considerable pressure, and it has been important to recognise that. Additionally, larger public bodies sometimes struggled with the lack of agility required to navigate standing protocols within tight timescales. 

A critical technical barrier remains: national client database systems are currently unable to capture A&A data or track preventative outcomes effectively. Furthermore, securing multi-agency data-sharing agreements has proved time-consuming, highlighting the difficulty of bridging different organisational information silos. 

Five Steps for Full Implementation 

For the "Ask and Act" duties to be successfully rolled out nationwide, the following steps will be essential: 

1. System-Wide IT Integration: With long lead-in times, developing and funding the developing of a functional IT infrastructure is an urgent priority to ensure interacting with service users can be logged and shared without creating a significant administrative burden. 
2. Streamlined Information Governance: Developing "gold standard" Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) and data-sharing templates will help partners navigate legal barriers more quickly. 
3. Robust Lived-Experience Models: Future implementation must follow the lead of pilots that developed tiered peer-involvement structures, ensuring that engagement is safe, trauma-informed, and ethically compensated. 
4. Senior-Level Buy-In: Success requires personalised engagement at a senior level to ensure that homelessness prevention is embedded into the strategic priorities of all public bodies, not just housing departments. 
5. Responsibility and Co-ordination: As the Ask and Act duties are explored, clarity will be needed on the individual responsibilities of different services, while working closely in partnership to co-ordinate support and interventions for individuals and households. 
6. Sustainable Resourcing: Looking beyond the 12 months pilots, we need to start thinking about implementation funding now to ensure services have the long-term capacity to act on newly identified needs. 

The initial learning from these pilots shows that while the technical and structural path is complex, the enthusiasm across Scotland’s public sector is remarkably high, underlining “the potential of the pilots to create better services by transforming delivery”.  

With only 30 months until commencement of the duties, we do not have to wait until the pilots finish to draw on initial learning and exploring the necessary infrastructure.   

By refining these pathways now, we are creating the opportunity for the next government to build a foundation where no one falls through the gaps. We must not let that opportunity pass us by.