Another roar of pain and anger from the homelessness charity sector. I've written before about the havoc wreaked on vital housing support provision by the cuts (here, here and here) and the likely consequences. Some charities have laid low and accepted their fate: others have spoken out powerfully and eloquently about the short-sightedness of the cuts, and the effects they will have on the vulnerable people they work with.
What follows falls firmly into the latter category. It concerns a piece written by Andrew Redfern, the chief executive of Framework, a Nottinghamshire-based charity, for the introduction to a report celebrating its 10th anniversary. It explains how far services for homeless and vulnerable people have come in the past decade, not least as a result of investment through the Supporting People programme, and how quickly those services will fall apart, now that funding stream has been savaged.
Framework provides housing, employment and health support to the most vulnerable people, an area of preventative welfare that has shown itself to be high impact, both in terms of the social outcomes it delivers, and its cost-effectiveness. As Redfern explains:
"We are about saving tenancies, preventing repossessions and bringing people off the streets. We are getting them into homes, treatment, training and work."
The cuts come, however, as it experiences increasing demand for services from its most vulnerable clients: victims of domestic violence, homeless people, care leavers, refugees, teenage parents, older people, people with mental illness or disability, and ex-offenders.
It's worth pointing out that Redfern is no defender of the status quo. In conversations I have had with him in the past he has spoken passionately of the need to be flexible, to innovate, to integrate services, big society-style, with communities (as Framework been doing for years), and to adjust, like any other business, social or otherwise, to economic realities.
Redfern is furious, however, at the barely-manageable speed, scale, and crudeness of the cuts. I suspect he speaks for many charities, across many sectors, when he writes:
"Much of what has been achieved is now under threat, Change is both inevitable and welcome but avoidable destruction is not."
The bitter irony is that the decision-makers who have overseen those cuts do not seem to disagree with Redfern about the importance of housing support: neither ministers - who exhort councils to invest in housing support (but do nothing to ensure it happens) - nor local authorities, who blame the government's War on Deficit for the (in many cases drastic) cuts they are making to services for the most vulnerable. So what has gone wrong? Redfern explains:
"[Supporting People] is being destroyed by the recklessness of politicians and the incompetence of civil servants. All three parties are implicated. Labour removed the ring-fence from Supporting People [budgets], ignoring much expert advice and many representations from providers and service users. The Coalition has cut the budget and re-allocated it as part of a general redistribution from poor areas to rich ones. With nothing to protect the programme's resources, the winners use the money for other purposes at local level while the losers cut services to the most vulnerable people."
He continues:
"The politicians and civil servants who are presiding over this destruction will no doubt cite the recession and associated public sector deficit as justification for their actions. They have no such defence. The decisions taken at central and local level about the future of Supporting People have little or nothing to do with the economy. They are unnecessary, ill-considered changes driven by arrogance and an unwillingness to listen."
Redfern says the effects of this avoidable destruction are already apparent, both in Nottingham (where the Labour-controlled city council has cut Supporting People budgets by 45%) and in the surrounding areas (where Tory-run Nottinghamshire county council has cut the budgets by 43%). A day centre for homeless people has closed, along with supported housing for young women and rough sleepers, while services dedicated to keeping vulnerable people in accomodation (and not in hospital, prison or on the streets) have been scaled down. He says:
"The reduction and closure of services is already having a visible impact. Informal street counts show an increase in rough sleeping over the past few months. Hostels are beginning to 'silt up' as people have nowhere to go, and more people are seeking immediate help by knocking on the doors of offices, churches and private dwellings... I am especially concerned about the loss of floating support capacity with its inevitable impact on levels of homelessness, rough sleeping, poverty, ill-health and crime."
Disproportionate cuts, targeted at the most vulnerable, he says, don't just affect those directly affected, but they increase the burden on the tax payer by shifting the risk onto expensive crisis provision in hospitals and the criminal justice system. We may save money now, but we will pay many times over in the future.
Framework has had to make tough decisions: between 140 and 190 posts are at risk as a result of the cuts to Supporting People budgets. Remaining staff have taken pay cuts of up to 10%, and holiday and sick pay entitlements have been trimmed. For all this, it remains optimistic about developing new services. For all the anger felt towards politicians, and the frustration at the cuts, there's a determination to survive and succeed. As Redfern says:
"We can hardly cease to care just because times are tough".
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