The Dublin Housing First Project, in line with the Homeless Agency Partnership Vision, the National Homelessness Strategy The Way Home 2010-2013 and the Pathway to Home model, seeks to end the need to sleep rough prioritising an identified number of entrenched rough sleepers with significant support requirements. The Regional Contact and Outreach Team has identified that this group of individuals over a number of years have not engaged with the range of available accommodation/social care/primary care services. Current levels and methods of service provision have not proven effective in responding to the range of significant support needs of these individuals.
This project seeks to provide self-contained, independent, scattered, community-based housing units for each participant, affording them equal rights to any tenant renting privately. There are no staff on-site. Support is provided through home visits by the Housing First Team which is an intensive case management team.
A number of housing units will be available every three months and 20 units in total will be available during the 12 months of this demonstration project. This will allow a rolling entry into the project and phased increase in the caseload of the team.
The project is client-led: participants choose to take part in the project, choose their housing unit as far as possible, identify their own goals and the HF team works with the person to achieve their goals. In this way, the project aims to promote participants autonomy, independence and to support them in settling into their home and integrating into their community. Participants will be invited to participate in Housing First and when they choose to do so they will see a number of housing units to choose from and select their preference. They will be supported to:
- prepare for the move-in
- actually move-in and have furniture, soft furnishings and groceries provided for the initial move-in.
- access relevant benefits and entitlements
- review their support needs and establish goals
- access the services of the HF team
- access relevant services not represented on the HF team directly
- maintain their housing and integrate into their community
Participants will continue to be supported even if the tenancy cannot be sustained by them.
The HF team employs an intensive case management model, providing visiting support to participants in their new home. Team roles:
- Housing services worker (& team leader)
- Regional Contact and Outreach Service keyworkers x 2
- GP
- Nurse
- Substance Use Specialist and psychiatric nurse
- Peer support and advocate worker
- Training Education and Employment Support
An evaluation of the project will produce a report reviewing the first 12 months of the project which will make recommendations regarding the potential application of this model in the Dublin region and nationally.
For further details on this project, please contact:
- Elaine Butler: Integrated Services Co-ordinator, DRHE ~ elaine.butler@dublincity.ie
- Louisa Santoro: Housing First Team Leader/ Stepping Stone ~ louisa@steppingstonecharity.ie