The Thinkhouse Review: how do we fix the social care crisis?

The second report that caught my eye focuses on another current crisis – the rising levels of homelessness – reviewed through the lens of Local Authority (LA) funding.

WPI Economics Report wrote Local Authority Spending on Homelessness for St Mungo’s and Homeless Link, pulling together data from a range of different sources, including desk analysis, local authority out-turn data, interviews and a roundtable, to produce this concise and well-argued report with eight clear policy recommendations.

The report focuses on the impact of the significant reduction in spending on homelessness between 2008/9 and 2017/18, calculating that £5bn less has been spent on single homelessness than if funding had continued at 2008/9 levels.

As ever however, it is the statistics that quantify the human cost that hit the hardest – 4,500 people sleeping on the streets in England, 80,000 households in temporary accommodation (not counting hidden homeless households) and 600 street sleepers dying in 2017.

“It is the statistics that quantify the human cost that hit the hardest”

The report acknowledges some of the policy initiatives taken recently, but highlights the crippling effect of cuts in funding and importantly, the knock-on impact this has created on how services are delivered. It argues an appropriate response should be built on three principles: sufficiency, certainty and directed.

The latter point is that there needs to be a mechanism to ensure funding reaches people experiencing homelessness, rather than being spent on other local political priorities or budgetary pressures.

The report’s conclusions focus on the need for greater clarity from the government about desired outputs matched to funding, a plea for long-term funding with exceptions only for genuine pilots, and improvements in data for monitoring activity and outputs.

My final recommended read is The Impact of Universal Credit – Revisited by the Northern Housing Consortium (NHC).

I believe it’s important that housing associations continue to engage, sponsor and invest in research and the NHC’s focus on this important area is pleasing to see. It’s also a particularly good report – short, focused and well written.

It builds on the evidence from the NHC’s year-long longitudinal study of its membership, originally published in Dec 2017, which collected evidence on their residents and their experience of dealing with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The chancellor announced several changes to Universal Credit in the 2018 Autumn Statement on the back of widespread criticism. As its name suggests, the report revisits that earlier NHC work, supplementing it with roundtables, reflections from other studies and a survey of NHC members.

The findings suggest that although the DWP has taken positive steps, many issues raised by the initial study are a continuing concern. These include inconsistency of information, increases in rent arrears and waiting times still going beyond five weeks.

Again, it is the human element that has the most impact and the various case studies included throughout the report make sobering reading.

The Impact of Universal Credit – Revisited concludes with NHC again calling for a pause in the roll-out of the benefit, to give DWP the opportunity to iron out the flaws and make the system workable for all concerned. A delay to the timetable would not be a huge setback. But the “DWP must learn from its own experiences, those of claimants, and those who support them.”

Steve Moseley, group director of governance, strategy & communications, L&Q and editorial panel member, Thinkhouse