Review of Homelessness Prevention and Relief Services (2019)

In 2014, Newcastle City Council commissioned “Crisis Response – Homelessness Prevention” services to enable accommodation and support to be provided in the context of four ‘service systems’:  

• Support for single homeless people, couples and homeless families including those with multiple needs (such as, but not limited to, those with problematic drug and alcohol use, offending behaviour, mental health problems, learning disabilities, refugees, older homeless people, veterans)  
• Support for young people aged 16-24 at risk, including those with chaotic lives, care leavers, teenage parents, and young LGBT people  
• Support for people with mental health problems who need housing related support associated with their mental health needs   
• Support for people who are multiply excluded 

Through this commissioning activity, several partnerships were established to deliver crisis response and homelessness prevention services, and these ‘service systems’ continue to provide useful opportunities for collaboration. We have therefore continued to use these ‘service systems’ when considering the contract opportunities for 2019. 

The review during 2018/19 included consultation and engagement including with current providers, current and potential service users and the public. The feedback from this exercise informed an Integrated Impact Assessment to outline our proposals for the future commissioning and service delivery model for Homelessness Prevention and Relief Services.

• Final Integrated Impact Assessment – Homelessness Prevention and Relief Services
• Commissioning Model - Final Consultation Document
• Engagement Feedback

Consultation and engagement presentations:

• Initial proposal engagement sessions held July/August 2018

Co-production design sessions held August/September 2018

• Homelessness segmentation analysis session
• Data payments and shadow Payment by Results (PbR) session 1
• Data payments and shadow Payment by Results (PbR) session 2

Specific service area design sessions held November 2018

• Young people - supported accommodation and resettlement
• Mental health - supported accommodation and floating support
• Single homelessness - crisis accommodation hubs: East and West (crisis accommodation, emergency beds, housing first, floating support) and Single homelessness - supported accommodation citywide