Newcastle's Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer

Newcastle's relatively good record on preventing homelessness has been based on long-term committed political leadership, council housing, investment in accommodation, advice and support services, and an infrastructure to facilitate consensus and partnership working. 

Newcastle City Council established the Active Inclusion Newcastle partnership approach in 2013, as part of improving our responses to the government’s welfare reforms and the associated increased risk of homelessness and in the context of austerity. On 17 October 2016 the Prime Minister launched a new Homelessness Prevention Programme and Newcastle was announced as one of three Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer ‘early adopters’ to pilot new initiatives to tackle homelessness in local areas. 

We used our Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer funding to support a public service transformation programme from 1 January 2017 to 31 March 2019. This has focused on system change and strengthening our citywide culture that makes the prevention of homelessness everyone’s business and homelessness crisis the exception. 

Overview of Newcastle's Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer  

Below are resources which share some of the learning from our Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer, grouped under the themes of the issues we decided to work on. We understand that different local authority areas can have very different contexts. However, we believe that we have some learning that every area will find relevant and replicable and we hope that others benefit from us sharing our learning and resources in this way. 

Responding as consistently and effectively as we can to residents who are homeless or are at risk of homelessness:

•  ‘Our Inclusion Plan’ – presentation on using service design to support service development (please email activeinclusion@newcastle.gov.uk to request a copy of the PDF)
•  Our Inclusion Plan’ – our homelessness assessment and planning framework  (please email activeinclusion@newcastle.gov.uk to request a copy of the PDF)
• New Local Government Network (NLGN) blog: How are councils future-proofing through prototyping?
• Pathways: clarifying responses to residents who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in Newcastle – the process of developing the pathways resource (pdf, 524kb)
• Pathways: clarifying responses to residents who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in Newcastle - the resource (please email activeinclusion@newcastle.gov.uk to request a copy of the PDF)
•  Workforce development – overview of our routine approach and accompanying resources (pdf,130kb) 

Working towards more integrated responses for residents:

• Homelessness Prevention Pilot with Jobcentre Plus – report (pdf, 283kb)

The files below may not be suitable for users of assistive technology. If you use assistive technology and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email activeinclusion@newcastle.gov.uk  Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

• Multidisciplinary team – summative review (pdf, 2.17mb)
• Multidisciplinary team – the principles and practice (pdf, 324kb) 

Improving our collective understanding:

•  Homelessness Prevention in Newcastle: Examining the role of the ‘local state’ in the context of austerity and welfare reforms (2019) – executive summary (pdf, 510kb) 
•  Homelessness Prevention in Newcastle: Examining the role of the ‘local state’ in the context of austerity and welfare reforms (2019) – full report (pdf, 3.5mb) 
• In-depth case reviews – a brief guide (pdf, 138kb) 
•  Retelling Stories Project – report (pdf, 271kb) 
• Newcastle Voices Project – report (pdf, 1.86mb) (please email activeinclusion@newcastle.gov.uk to request a copy of the toolkit)