Established 2005 Registered Charity No. 1110656

Scottish Charity Register No. SC043760

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Concern as BCC advice services restructured

May 12 2011
Charity fears impact on access and quality


Leading charity Homeless Link has approached Birmingham City Council to offer its support and to express its deep concern over the restructure of the authority’s homeless and housing advice services in the city and the likely detrimental impact on access and quality.

Previously delivered from various neighbourhood offices across Birmingham, homeless services have now been restricted to four access points located in Erdington, Newtown, Northfield and Small Heath.

Having had an offer of support politely declined by the Council, Director of Regions for Homeless Link, Mark McPherson, is concerned over the introduction of the new style of delivery. He said: “We represent many homeless charities in Birmingham. Concerns have been raised with us about the council’s plan to offer homelessness prevention and advice from just four specialist centres.

“The council has consulted on its plans and we believe the new way of delivering help could bring benefits, such as offering a more consistent and co-ordinated service. However, we are concerned that homeless people may find the new centres more difficult to get to and that having fewer services could increase pressure and reduce the quality of help that people get.

“We have raised these issues with Birmingham City Council, who have assured us that they are taking steps to make sure that access to help and the quality of the service is maintained.”

Although they are unwilling to enter into a dialogue with Home less Link at the present time, a spokesperson for Birmingham City Council stressed that the changes should be seen as a positive move: “Our new Homelessness Advice service was launched with four specialist homeless service centres in March 2011. This is in addition to a specialist service, the Hub, for young people under the age of 21.

“The change is a positive step forward and by adopting this model we are able to provide an enhanced range of prevention services to those in a time of crisis, and an improved, more efficient response for those whose homelessness cannot be prevented. Assistance is available to assist those applicants who need to travel to an office.

“Existing services through neighbourhood offices remain unchanged for customers who need general housing advice. The new approach was piloted in Newtown prior to being rolled out across the city and customers advised us that they were in favour of the more comprehensive support they received under the new arrangements. “We are currently undertaking an exercise to look at the responses to the consultation process and how these can be fed back to providers and customers as part of the ongoing development of the new service.” Likewise, Homeless Link will be watching with interest to deter mine how the changes will affect service users in both the short and the long term. Mark McPherson added: “Homeless charities will watch to see what impact these changes have. These are difficult times but we need to make sure that frontline help and care for homeless people is protected.”

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