Tackling the housing crisis
Unifying services to help the homeless

Councils
Norwich City Council

Austerity, with cuts to mental health services, social services, public health, and housing services, has driven up numbers of rough sleepers. To address their complex and multiple needs, Norwich City Council, as part of their Make Every Adult Matter accreditation, negotiated a partnership of providers (NHS, itself, social services, public health, St. Martin’s housing trust, Salvation Army, Shelter Norwich and others) whose workers stepped out of their individual organisations to form a single seamless service. The key aim of the project is to reduce the number of people who are homeless and sleeping rough and to ensure that services are accessible for those who need them so they can move away from being homeless. It provides flexible support focused around each individual and aims to encourage a positive outcome through the opportunity of training, skills development and employment. This means rough sleepers and vulnerable people can access the help they need at whatever point they make contact with the service, rather than needing to deal with separate organisations independently.