Member News
21st December 2010
Launching a manifesto, ensuring departments' strategies are 'homeless proof', and ultimately protecting frontline services for the vulnerable, Homeless Link has had a busy 2010.
It is our responsibility to ensure society's most vulnerable people become visible and important to those leading our country. So, with a general election looming, our priority at the start of 2010 was to launch our ten-point election manifesto, 'Ending homelessness together'.
Our work requires the support of all political parties across all government departments. Our campaign was backed by the major parties, and one of the first positive signals from the incoming coalition government was the setting-up of the Ministerial Working Group on homelessness. Jenny Edwards, our chief executive and chair of the Conservatives' Homelessness Foundation, is working across departments to ensure strategies are 'homeless-proofed' and don't cause homelessness unintentionally. This represents a major step forward in our prevention agenda.
Since then we have been working hard to ensure we were not knocked off course by the Comprehensive Spending Review. The implications of the CSR are profound. However, our submission, and work with departments, clearly influenced decision-makers in the Treasury. Evidence we presented contributed significantly to the case for protecting the homelessness grant, and to a below-average cut of 12 per cent (2.7 per cent next year) in the Supporting People grant at national level.
Nonetheless, we remain deeply concerned about the overall impact of cuts on vulnerable people and their support services. The real devil is in the detail of the Localism Bill. It is now at local level where CSR pledges to 'ensure that expenditure is focused on protecting the quality of the key frontline services… that provide support to the worst off in society' must be delivered.
And finally, seemingly a long way from Westminster and the local town hall, we continued to build our campaign to end homelessness, focusing on the potential of people who are homeless, and on their power to change.
We never fail to be moved by the individual stories of people making their own journey out of homelessness. The Places of Change Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show – built by 420 homeless people from 40 agencies, in partnership with the Homes and Communities Agency, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Eden Project – demonstrated to a wider audience that homeless people can achieve amazing things if they have the right opportunity.
Looking ahead, our agenda is busy. We will continue to work in partnership with national and local government on policy change that impacts on the lives of people who are vulnerable and at risk of homelessness, specifically in the 10 areas we identified as key to ending homelessness in our manifesto, at www.homeless.org.uk/manifesto
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