Homelessness
The Northern Ireland Housing Executive has statutory responsibility for responding to homelessness. The Housing Executive’s strategic approach to dealing with homelessness is the current ‘Ending Homelessness Together – the Homelessness Strategy for Northern Ireland 2017-22’ which has an overall vision of eliminating long term homelessness and rough sleeping and has at its core prevention and early intervention.
Ending Homelessness Together – the Homelessness Strategy for Northern Ireland 2017-22
The Housing Executive developed its new Homelessness Strategy in partnership with the Department, relevant statutory agencies and voluntary and community sector organisations and published this in April 2017. The new Strategy aims to ensure a cross departmental and inter agency approach to ending homelessness.
Homelessness is a complex issue. A physical home, whilst incredibly important, will not on its own, address a homelessness situation. Homelessness individuals and households or those vulnerable to homelessness, quite often have underlying issues and/or complex needs, and require support to maintain their health, their home and their employment.
For this reason the Department took the lead, working with our partners in government, on a rolling Interdepartmental Homelessness Action plan which focuses on addressing gaps in those non-accommodation services that are likely to have the most impact on the lives of people who are homeless and those who are most at risk of homelessness. This includes health and education services, support for those leaving places of care and support services for those who are experiencing family or domestic issues. The plan complements the NI Housing Executive’s Homelessness Strategy 2017 - 2022.
The Year 2 Action Plan reflects comments from the homelessness provider sector during Year 1 by including actions which are more outcome focused and attempt to make a tangible difference to peoples’ lives. This Plan, together with the Report on Year 1 is available at:
Homelessness Strategy Steering Group
The Department chairs this steering group comprising of officials from a number of Departments and representatives of the statutory agencies and the voluntary sector continues to consider how Government departments and other relevant agencies can best work together to ensure:
- that the risk of homelessness is reduced
- that the full range of appropriate services is available to those who find themselves homeless, so that they can make the choices required to play a full part in society
- that the Housing Executive can fully implement the objectives set out in its Homelessness strategy 2017-22
NIAO Report: Homelessness in Northern Ireland
In November 2017, the Northern Ireland Audit Office(NIAO) published its report “Homelessness in Northern Ireland” which contained nine recommendations for change which are aimed at improving the effectiveness of interventions undertaken in respect of tackling and preventing homelessness. The recommendations centre around better collection and use of data, more regular analysis/evaluation of progress towards strategic objectives, and greater cross-Departmental activity. Work is ongoing to give effect to these recommendations.
Year 6 Stopping Domestic and Sexual Violence and Abuse Action Plan
The Year 6 Stopping Domestic and Sexual Violence and Abuse Strategy has been developed by Department of Health (DoH) and Department of Justice (DoJ) in conjunction with Department for Communities (DfC), Department of Finance (DoF) and Department of Education (DE).