Homelessness prevention by London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

‘Community Solutions’ approach to early intervention

The context

In 2017, Barking and Dagenham was facing multiple challenges. Home to the youngest, most transient population in London, the borough also had the city’s highest poverty and multiple deprivation rates, and second highest rates of unemployment. Internal research showed one in ten residents owed the Council money. Demand for public services was rising.

Homelessness was also on the increase, with households in temporary accommodation more than trebling since 2010. Due to a dire shortage of affordable housing, families were increasingly placed out of borough with costly private providers, at astronomical costs to the Council. This context and the borough’s future outlook demanded far-reaching change - in the direction of prevention.

The intervention

The Council acknowledged reactive approaches, siloed working and service pathways were inadequate to address the complex, interconnected challenges residents faced. Different parts of the Council could appear to residents to work at cross purposes, for example one team enforcing debt collection whilst another was offering support. A concept of a holistic, low threshold, prevention-focused service - where teams work together with residents to find the root cause of problems and prevent them escalating - was born. The new Community Solutions service brought together 16 frontline teams, including housing, money, children’s social work, libraries, learning and skills.

The first Community Solutions ‘Homes and Money Hub’ opened in Barking’s Learning Centre in 2018. It employed staff, often on generic job descriptions, with greater emphasis on finding ways to offer support than discharging narrowly defined statutory responsibilities. A second element of the service was community food clubs, located in areas of extreme poverty. Residents could become members for £3.50 week in return for a weekly shop worth £20. Food clubs were seen more as points of engagement than transactional food banks, with co-located services, such as digital skills, job clubs adult learning and income maximisation, as well as volunteer opportunities for local people.

Within the homelessness team, seven times as many officers were assigned to prevention as to statutory assessment roles, aided by co-location with tenancy support, antisocial behaviour and income maximisation teams. Prevention officers act early if a person had a housing issue and aren’t limited to the ‘at risk within 56 days’ window of the HRA. The Council also works with external public sector data specialists to bring together separate, internal datasets. This helps officers easily identify then proactively target people entitled to benefits they aren’t claiming, and pinpoint those at highest risk up to six months before crisis and offer earlier support.

The outcome

Two years after Community Solutions was launched, whilst 97% more at risk households approached the Council, more than double the number had their homelessness prevented than was the case in 2017-18 (134 monthly, against 66). Use of temporary accommodation fell from 1,876 households in 2018 to 1,404 in 2021 (26% decrease) saving over £1million - reinvested into communities. 3,000 residents were supported at Homes and Money Hubs, with over 1,000 entering work and 500 starting volunteering. Data analytics and targeted support secured £1.4 million extra help for people in the worst financial situations. The borough also recorded a 24% drop in antisocial behaviour.

Key insights

progress on prevention is possible: even in one of the most challenging boroughs of London
not all staff members respond well to working in a less siloed, more generic, person-centred way: large scale changes are not pain free and some people will decide new roles are not for them
more sophisticated use and analysis of Council data aids prevention by enabling a better diagnosis of the problem, easier identification of households at risk and more targeted support

Find out more…

Katherine Gilcreest, Head of Community Solutions, LB Barking & Dagenham
katherine.gilcreest@lbbd.gov.uk