Homelessness
Our next item of business is a statement on homelessness by Ms Wendy Alexander. The minister will take questions at the end of the statement, so there should be no interventions during it.
On a point of order. Following the point of order last week about Executive ministers pre-announcing statements that are coming to the chamber, the Minister for Communities announced a £20 million package for homelessness on the radio this morning. Will you give an opinion on whether that was appropriate?
I regret to say that I heard that interview this morning. While it is fine for ministers to trail proceedings of the Parliament on the radio—that is a regular procedure—when I heard that the figure of £20 million was to be announced to the Parliament, I was a little taken aback. As I said last week, it is a matter for ministerial judgment, but we would prefer to hear announcements in the chamber first, rather than on the radio.
On a point of order.
Is it the same point of order?
It is. Given that this is at least the second time that this matter has had to be raised by you in this chamber, will you undertake to raise the matter with the First Minister, as this is an intolerable state of affairs?
The First Minister and I meet from time to time.
Tom McCabe, do you have a point of order as well?
I wish to provide some clarification. Two points of order have been raised. It is a pity that the members concerned do not fully recollect previous announcements. The amount of money that has been mentioned was announced previously to this Parliament. I am sure that the Minister for Communities will make that clear when she speaks.
Let us hear the statement.
Let me make one observation. We had a debate in the chamber on 16 September, during which I announced that we were increasing the previous allocation of £14 million to £20 million, and that I would come back to the chamber to explain how that money would be spent. That is what I am doing now; I did not move one iota beyond that in saying to the press that that was what we were doing today.
There are a number of items in my statement— mindful of the guidance that we received last week—that will be news to the chamber. Of course, the Opposition has had pre-access to the statement and is therefore aware of its contents. I will now move on to my statement.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to bring to the Parliament my proposals for the next phase of the rough sleepers initiative. Since 1997, we have directed £16 million to projects that address the problems of those who live on the streets, under bridges and in disused buildings in the cities and villages of Scotland. We targeted the first tranche of money at those whom we knew, or thought we knew, were sleeping rough. It was important to get the first projects started because that would bring people in from the cold.
Many of the early projects were about outreach and street workers, but from the outset we knew that we needed to understand the issues better and to have work carried out at grass-roots level, so we set up a research project to evaluate what we were doing and to inform us on how the initiative might be taken forward. That was the inheritance that my ministerial colleagues and I in the communities team inherited in May: £16 million already allocated and new research just about to arrive.
It was on that basis that we chose to highlight in the programme for government that our pledge above all others was that by 2003 no one should have to sleep rough in Scotland. As everyone working in the field acknowledges, that is an ambitious goal and one with which we are proud to associate ourselves. Today, I am announcing the next phase in making that pledge a reality. I am inviting local authorities and their partners to bring forward proposals to spend a further £20 million in the next two years.
Crucially, the evaluation report that we are publishing today gives us the evidence to target the new investment at the heart of the problem. First and foremost, the evaluation tells us that many more people across Scotland than had previously been estimated have had the experience of sleeping rough. As many as 8,000 to 11,000 people in Scotland sleep rough during a year. They are not necessarily people who have no accommodation; they are people whose access to accommodation is so precarious that at times it is necessary for them to sleep in the open. In many cases, they will be the same people who
stay for brief periods in hostels, or in other forms of temporary accommodation provided by local authorities, voluntary organisations, friends and family.
Overwhelmingly, such people have been connected with the housing, social work or health services at some time. What the research tells us is that they slip through the net. Whatever solutions are available to them are not enough or are not sufficiently co-ordinated to give them the help they desperately need.
As is true of us all, rough sleepers have a complex cocktail of personal circumstances, although they are invariably more complex for rough sleepers than for most of us. That complex cocktail of personal circumstances goes well beyond housing. One in three rough sleepers surveyed had alcohol problems, one in three had a drug problem, one in four had a physical health problem and one in five had a mental health problem.
The message is that Scotland's rough sleepers need support to address their health needs, addiction issues and accommodation problems. Unless we can offer help on all those big issues— health, housing and addiction—the greatest risk is that people will quickly find themselves sleeping on the streets again.
The research shows how comprehensively we fail those for whom the state purports to care. One in four rough sleepers has been in local authority care, four in 10 have done time in prison, more than one in 10 have been in long-term care in hospitals and more than one in 10 have been in the armed forces. Quite simply, we have comprehensively failed those people as they have moved from our care into independent living.
The overriding message to us, Scotland's new legislators willing and anxious to solve the crisis of rough sleeping, is simple: provide the right support at the right time. That means support not just in a time of crisis, when the personal, social and financial costs are high, but Scottish support services available at the point where they are most needed, before the street becomes the only option. Above all, it means vital services in hostels and day centres not a bus ride across the city and not just during office hours. It means a package of support that addresses the whole person— sustained for as long as it is needed—because the cost of failing is a cost that we all bear.
Making that happen will depend on teamwork. I am delighted that the Minister for Health and Community Care and the Minister for Justice have agreed to involve formally the health and justice departments in the next phase of the rough sleepers initiative. We will examine the co-ordination of health and social work services with the provision of accommodation, the provision of advice and support for ex-offenders on their release from prison, the availability of alcohol and drugs detoxification and rehabilitation services for homeless and roofless people. We will consider how best to ensure that rough sleepers receive accessible health care.
In the guidelines I will issue today, local authorities are being invited to develop proposals that will make those connections on the ground. I have increased the budget by 40 per cent—to £20 million—to help them do that. A sum of £2 million will go to fund projects that address the full range of rough sleepers' needs and provide integrated, supported accommodation with some support services on site.
I am targeting authorities that have not yet developed strategies for addressing the problems of rooflessness in their area. I am making available £2 million to ensure that rough sleeping is tackled throughout Scotland.
We need to intervene earlier to ensure that people move out of hostels into homes, rather than from hostels to the street. A sum of £2 million is therefore being made available for effective preventive measures, such as rent deposit schemes, which will reduce the number of people who reach the point of having to sleep rough. The remaining £14 million will be directed towards projects that further develop existing strategies for tackling rough sleeping, some of which will involve continuation funding for projects that were developed in the earlier stages of the initiative.
Both the national evaluation that I have discussed today and the recently published Glasgow evaluation suggest that there is a particular problem with the provision of services for rough sleepers and homeless people in Glasgow. Glasgow has one in eight of the households in Scotland, but one in three homelessness applications come from that city. The Glasgow evaluation study found that 60 per cent of rough sleepers were regular hostel dwellers, that almost half of them had some sort of accommodation ban from hostels in the city, that 65 per cent had held a tenancy that had failed and that 70 per cent had at one time been evicted from their hostel or other accommodation.
Those statistics paint a stark picture of how the present system is failing. It fails to accommodate people and it fails to support and protect people if they are provided with accommodation. I know that many rough sleepers find living on the streets less frightening than staying in some of the hostel accommodation that is available. Too often, the mix of people in hostels exacerbates the problem. The hostels are too large. Some of them house more than 200 people in the most unsuitable accommodation, and little more than a caretaker is
available. Hostels mix young with old, and the vulnerable with those who are most likely to prey on them, and little is offered by way of co-ordinated help and support. That system belongs to the past and we mean to change it.
No one could argue with the conclusion that the problem of rough sleeping is at its most acute in Glasgow. Jackie Baillie, as chair of the homelessness task force, and I have therefore decided that we must make special arrangements to ensure that the scale and nature of the problem in Glasgow are fully addressed.
Today, I am announcing that a high-level team is being set up to review the current efforts to tackle the problems of street homelessness in Glasgow. It will determine what more needs to be done to improve the provision of accommodation— particularly hostel accommodation—and of social and other support for people with complex needs, and it will make recommendations for action. I expect the review to be thorough and fundamental. The team must therefore take the necessary action. That will take time. It will have to form an early view on proposals for rough sleepers initiative funding that are due to be submitted from Glasgow in early January.
One of the issues that I expect the team to consider is the present state of hostels in Glasgow and what should be done to improve them. I am under no illusions. I know that some will need to be replaced, others upgraded and others simply improved. I want the team to advise on how that can best be achieved, considering all the options, including the use of private finance.
The team will report through Jackie Baillie's homelessness task force. It will be chaired by the Scottish Executive, and I am pleased to say that the following experienced people have agreed to take part: Margaret Vass of Glasgow City Council housing department; Rab Murray of Glasgow City Council social work department; Catriona Renfrew of Greater Glasgow Health Board; Ian Robertson of the Hamish Allan Centre; Margaret Taylor of the Glasgow Council for Single Homeless; Liz Nicholson of Shelter Scotland; Mel Young of The Big Issue; Suzanne Fitzpatrick of the University of Glasgow centre for urban studies; and Louise Carlin, the co-ordinator for the rough sleepers initiative in Glasgow.
The Executive is serious about its commitment to end by 2003 the need for anyone to have to sleep rough in Scotland. To make it happen, we are prepared to make the necessary commitment in terms of funding and the additional effort that will be needed and to ensure that the different strands of government are connected. I am confident that through the rough sleepers initiative, through the homelessness task force, through the efforts of the new Glasgow strategy group and through the commitment of colleagues in other departments, long-term solutions can and will be developed. This is about the Parliament working in partnership with people at the sharp end across Scotland to make a difference. We can succeed.
I thank the minister for her statement. I am sure that she agrees that 11,000 rough sleepers are Scotland's scandal.
The minister confirmed that the £20 million is a re-release of announcements that have been made previously. Does she agree that she is in danger of recycling cash announcements? Furthermore, is she not in danger of recycling homeless people back on to the streets unless money is put into housing?
Only this morning, the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee was told by housing professionals that the real problem of homelessness is found in the lack of affordable, accessible housing. The rough sleepers initiative advisory group—the minister's own group—said that
"the Rough Sleepers Initiative will quickly silt up if supported move on accommodation is not made available."
Can the minister offer concrete assurances that those who are taken off the streets are not simply recycled back on to the streets later through a lack of resources at the next phase?
Does the minister agree that councils need cash for housing, otherwise we will have not only recycled announcements but will be in danger of recycling our young people back on to the streets?
Fiona raises an interesting issue. I said in September that I was increasing the available money to £20 million. I talked to colleagues about whether it was appropriate to come back to the Parliament today to comment on four new aspects of rough sleeping that I thought the Parliament would want to know about.
First, we are releasing the most comprehensive evaluation ever undertaken of the nature of the problem in Scotland. Secondly, I am using that evaluation to identify for the first time the sort of bids for that £20 million that we are looking for. Thirdly, my statement referred to the extent to which colleagues in the Executive were anxious to be part of the solution to rough sleeping, having shared the outcome of the evaluation with them. Fourthly, I have identified a particular problem in Glasgow that we want to fix.
It is certainly true that I have not added to the money. I have come back to the Parliament to say, "Here's the research. This is how we want to spend the money." I deemed it appropriate to bring that to the Parliament's attention. Today, everyone out there will receive a letter that will invite them to bid for an extra £20 million.
On the general point about housing finance, Fiona knows that when the Minister for Finance made his statement a couple of weeks ago, I was delighted to welcome the £50 million increase in the communities budget line, which is where the additional £6 million has been found.
I want to make a completely non-sectarian point on the wider issue of housing investment, as it is incredibly important. I will focus on the Glasgow context, as that is what we have talked about today. Fiona knows that because the debt will come to central Government, we have the opportunity to borrow up to £1 billion to invest in that city's housing stock. We are interested in being involved in developing those proposals— that is where we should look for new resources for housing in Scotland.
There are many more members who want to ask questions than are on the lists that were submitted beforehand. Short questions—and answers—will help to get us through as many as possible.
I am obliged to the minister for her statement and for the fact that it was released in advance.
Of the £14 million referred to in the minister's statement, how much relates to new beds in hostels? Does she accept that the report does not tell us anything that we did not already know, as it merely highlights the problem and the fact that this is a growing problem in respect of the scale and profile of the rough sleepers involved?
Does the minister accept that she is addressing the problem from the wrong perspective? While she refers to the problem of people departing hostels to go on to the streets, she does not deal with the real issue of people going from the streets to hostels and then not going anywhere. Much more attention should be paid to the fact that accommodation should be available to people after they leave hostels.
Those are two very pertinent issues. We are very concerned about what is happening in terms of waiting lists. Jackie Baillie's task force is examining that issue and I expect the Parliament to debate the conclusion of her findings next February. Rough sleeping is a microcosm of a much wider problem; I accept that absolutely.
Bill Aitken's second point was also valid. The question is how to move people on from hostel accommodation. This morning, I visited the Inglefield women's hostel in Glasgow and the Glasgow archdiocese project, which provides for damaged young people who want to move on to independent accommodation. We hope that some of the money that I outlined today will provide the kind of supportive housing that young people need as they move from a hostel setting into a fully independent tenancy. The mechanism already exists in the form of scattered flats, but we need the support services to help transfer people from a hostel setting to a fully independent tenancy.
I welcome the minister's statement on rooflessness. Should it represent only a partial solution, it is nevertheless welcome. Will the minister elaborate on the preventive measures that she outlined and the way in which the money will be targeted? Given the importance of Glasgow and the prominence of its drug and alcohol problems, will targeting strategies be directed towards Glasgow? Will that allow spending on associated projects that help people to get off drugs and alcohol? I would like some clarification on those points.
I thank the member for his question, which is very reasonable in the context of what we are trying to achieve. I mentioned that, from the basis of the evaluation, it is clear that we need to talk to colleagues in the justice department and the health department who have shown a great willingness to be involved in discussions about how to tackle the issue of rough sleepers.
As the member will know—although, perhaps, the rest of the chamber will not—we have been able to carry out the evaluation because of the support that we have received from the voluntary sector, which has a deeper understanding of the problem. We intend to meet the rough sleepers advisory group, which is led by the voluntary sector. We will bring to that a wider discussion of how support services are best provided. I do not want to anticipate the outcome of those discussions, but we will certainly report back on the matter.
I understand that the minister and her team have visited several homelessness organisations to discuss matters with homeless people and their representatives. Will she give specific details about the issues that have been raised by those organisations and individuals and how she intends to deal with them?
I would like to draw members' attention to the fact that the money that has been spent so far—the £16 million—is beginning to make a real difference.
I encourage members with an interest in this subject to visit the Cowgate day centre, which is a stone's throw from the Parliament building. I have visited the centre several times. The most interesting thing is that it provides a day centre facility that supports young and old people. In particular, it supports older people who have spent a long time on the street, are comfortable with their lifestyle, want to be in hostel accommodation
in the evening, but need a day care option. That is in stark contrast to the projects that we have been funding in Glasgow, such as the archdiocese hostel that we visited today, which is a highly supportive project for a very vulnerable group of young people taking the first step back into mainstream accommodation.
I, too, would like to thank the minister for outlining where the money will go. Given the scale of the problem as revealed by the research, is the Executive's target date to end rough sleeping still 2003? More important, does the minister genuinely believe that that is a realistic target?
It is hugely ambitious, but it is worth it and we will do our best. We have not changed it.
I welcome the minister's investment and the recognition that she is giving to homelessness and rooflessness.
Glasgow has been highlighted as an area with major problems. Are there any areas in Lanarkshire where money will be invested?
All the Lanarkshire authorities have successfully bid for rough sleepers money. One of the aspects of today's statement that has been commented on less is the commitment that every area of Scotland should benefit from the rough sleepers initiative. A number of local authorities—I think eight—have not yet benefited. We hope that they will be beneficiaries of this £20 million. Lanarkshire has already played its part.
The evaluation report indicates that the escalation in rough sleeping was closely associated with retrenchment in welfare provision, particularly in relation to young people. One in four rough sleepers has been in local authority care and the minister has admitted this afternoon to having comprehensively failed those vulnerable young people. Will the Executive therefore make strenuous representations to Westminster that it should abandon the proposed Department of Social Security transfer of resources to local authorities, which would remove 2,000 young Scottish care leavers from the benefits system?
As Fiona knows, a consultation is taking place about how we should best support this vulnerable group of young people, which the current arrangements have failed.
I will make three brief points. First, we have successfully halved youth unemployment in Scotland. That has reduced the scale of the problem. Secondly, this Administration is saying that it will create 20,000 modern apprenticeships for 16 and 17-year-olds, who have been among the most vulnerable people to be affected. Thirdly, among that group of vulnerable young people there is universal acceptance of the need for a different approach and that is what the consultation is considering.
In relation to young people leaving the care system, I perhaps have a slightly different view from Fiona McLeod, because I know that young people leaving the care system over the years have asked for a different set-up in relation to homelessness.
Given that the announcement concentrates on Glasgow and urban areas, could the minister outline that this initiative will also help rural communities?
Almost all the authorities that have not benefited so far from the rough sleepers initiative, largely because they have not submitted bids that deal with the problem, are in rural areas. We are now working with those authorities to ensure that all areas of Scotland benefit from this next round of funding.
I welcome the initiative and the recognition of people with mental health problems who are sleeping rough. Will the minister outline the arrangements to support that vulnerable group?
I think that that touches on the point that I made in response to Robert Brown. Today, we are saying that we fully acknowledge and recognise at the heart of Government that the health department and the justice department can contribute to solving this problem. We must make progress in partnership with the voluntary sector agencies, through the advisory group.
According to Strathclyde police, about 1,500 homeless people are put out of hostels and on to the streets of Glasgow city centre from 9 am to 9 pm, which makes them especially vulnerable. Will the minister look into that matter, especially as she has announced today that a high-level team will examine matters in Glasgow?
One of the interesting features of my visit to the Cowgate centre in Edinburgh was the number of young Glaswegians who told me that one of the reasons they are in Edinburgh is that there is somewhere to go during the day. There are not so many places to go in Glasgow. That said, I have visited the Lodging House Mission in Glasgow, which provides an open-door facility from 8 in the morning until the afternoon. There is a lack of provision in that area.
This report is the most comprehensive evaluation of rooflessness and homelessness. As Fiona
McLeod said, one of the major causes of homelessness is welfare retrenchment, particularly as it affects young people. I am not making a party political point. I hope that the minister will take this up with the Secretary of State for Social Security, send him a copy of the report and make representations to him about the need to look again at welfare rights for young people.
There is universal recognition of the very real problem of how we get the support package right for 16 and 17-year-olds who are completely dissociated from their families—in the traditional sense that we understand that word. A consultation is under way and, as has been shown in the chamber, there are very committed professionals on both sides of the debate about whether the personalised level of support that everyone says is necessary is best delivered via the DSS or via local authorities.
I thank the minister for the excellent measures she has outlined today. I would, however, like her views on the concerns that have been raised by Shelter regarding the rights of homeless people to access accommodation, given the possibility of new social landlords through stock transfer.
I have made it clear in the chamber on a number of occasions that the Executive is determined to ensure that homeless people are not disadvantaged in any way by moves towards community ownership. The very opposite would be the case if we were able to deal with the problem of the large number of hard-to-let houses that are, sadly, too often those that are offered to people facing homelessness.
While welcoming the minister's statement, can I ask her for an assurance that the Executive will introduce or support legislation that will oblige the Scottish courts to take into account the financial and social circumstances of people who are threatened with homelessness through repossession because of mortgage arrears?
The Executive has indicated that it is anxious to support a bill, introduced by Cathie Craigie, to deal with those measures. We have also said that we feel it would be appropriate for the wider issue of tenancy law as it affects homeless people to be taken forward by the expert group that Jackie Baillie is chairing. That group is due to report to Parliament in February, in advance of the introduction of the housing bill.
I welcome the involvement of the health department, which addresses one of the weaknesses of the rough sleepers initiative. Can the minister give us any more detail about how she will ensure the involvement of health services at local level and what form that involvement may take?
I have already said that further discussions will take place centrally, involving the rough sleepers initiative advisory group. The guidelines that were issued to local authorities today invite them to work locally with partners to think about how they can provide a package of support services for people who face homelessness. Local authorities must take more responsibility for the type of support services that are offered in and around their hostels.
I, too, welcome the minister's statement, particularly her announcement about preventive measures. Does she agree—or at least take on board if she cannot agree—that in addition to what she has announced, we urgently need extra resources for treatment and after care for alcoholics and drug addicts so that they do not end up in hostels, let alone on the streets? In other words, we need intervention at an even earlier stage.
All those matters are under consideration by ministerial colleagues.
I welcome the minister's announcement, particularly as it relates to Glasgow, the needs of which have duly been recognised.
The minister announced research and the establishment of a review group. Can she give us an assurance that the review group, in considering hostel provision in Glasgow, will recognise the complexities of young people's needs? This issue is about not only accommodation, but packages of care. Will appropriate agencies, including the social work department, be involved in the delivery of that review?
I think that the high-level and strategic nature of the group that we appointed today, and the Executive's participation on it, means that we can look to the group to deliver the sort of high-level intervention necessary to get the co-ordination of services that we want between mainstream budgets.
Will the minister undertake to co-operate with the Ministry of Defence to prevent ex-service personnel becoming rough sleepers, thus nipping the problem in the bud?
I had not considered that, but given that one in 10 rough sleepers is an ex- serviceman, it seems a wholly fair suggestion. I am happy to raise that positively with the rough sleepers advisory group.
I, too, welcome the minister's statement and, in particular, the £20 million over the next two years. Can she assure us that that money will not be distributed on the basis of competitive bids, as for every winner in such a process there are more losers? No local authority will make a bid unless there is a real need in its area. Surely it is a fundamental socialist principle that proven need should be met.
That was a very seriously asked question so I will give a serious answer. When the rough sleepers initiative was launched, the fact that it contained a challenge fund element was controversial. It had such an element because it was obvious that we were not solving the problem by traditional routes. As the discussion today has shown, by taking the challenge fund route we have created many innovative projects that show the way in which we want mainstream budgets to move.
John McAllion is saying that he does not want any areas to be left out. The rough sleepers initiative gives us the best of both worlds: a challenge fund process at the beginning to develop innovative projects and reward the best ones and then the roll-out to ensure that no part of Scotland loses out thereafter. We are now moving on to that second phase.
I now draw this part of the meeting to a close. I allowed it to run on longer than the allotted time because of the intense interest. I apologise to members who have not been called, but we must protect the time for the debate on motion S1M-258, in the name of the First Minister, on working together in Europe. I invite the First Minister to move his motion.