The Dublin Region Homeless Executive is responsible for providing support and services to the Dublin Joint Homelessness Consultative Forum and the Statutory Management Group through Dublin City Council as the lead statutory local authority. It adopts a shared service approach across South Dublin County Council, Fingal County Council and the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council.
The Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 provides a statutory structure to address the needs of people who are experiencing homelessness in Ireland. The Act outlines a statutory obligation to have an action plan in place and the formation of a Homelessness Consultative Forum and a Statutory Management Group. In the Dublin region, the Dublin Joint Homelessness Consultative Forum and the Statutory Management Group are in place to respond to homelessness across the four Dublin local authority areas.
The Dublin Region Homeless Executive works to implement the Pathway to Home model of housing, homeless and support provision and the Dublin Region Homeless Action Plan 2010-2013. It will also support actions in The Way Home: A Strategy to End Adult Homelessness in Ireland 2008-2013, such as the rollout of the Pathway Accommodation Support System (PASS), an online emergency bed management and client support system, which has been implemented throughout the Dublin region.
Delivery of services to people who are experiencing homelessness in Dublin
The Dublin Region Homeless Executive is responsible for the planning, coordination and administration of funding in relation to the provision of quality services to people who are homeless in the Dublin area, and for the development of responses to prevent homelessness. The Dublin Region Homeless Executive works with a range of voluntary and statutory services to implement the agreed action plan to deliver integrated services to people who are homeless and assisting them to move to long-term housing and independence with supports as required. It advocates for improvements in mainstream policies and services to make them responsive to the needs of people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.
Implementing the Pathway to Home model
The Pathway to Home model is in place as a result of a comprehensive review on homelessness in 2008, which sought to measure the extent of homelessness in Dublin, an evaluation of current measures in response to homelessness and to review expenditure on these responses in order to determine whether the resource is deployed in a way that ensures value for money is achieved.
From this review Counted In, 2008, Evaluation of Homeless Services 2008 Series and Review of Finances and Expenditure for Homeless Services were completed. A series of recommendations were made from these reviews resulting in The Homeless Agency Partnership Board’s December 2008 Submission to Government on implementing the national homeless strategy, The Way Home and on realising the 2010 vision of eliminating long-term homelessness and the need for people to sleep rough. These recommendations highlighted that there was a need for change to move away from the way in which services were configured into a model of of service delivery that provides better access to long-term housing and the provision of supports to people within housing.
Core elements of the Pathway to Home model
- Interventions and services that prevent homelessness- a Pathway to Home will work to ensure that homelessness is prevented by services delivering early interventions diverting the person at risk from having to enter temporary accommodation.
- Temporary accommodation and homeless services- where prevention does not occur, under the implementation of a Pathway to Home, a same day initial assessment of a person’s needs and their placement into temporary accommodation will take place. During their residence in this accommodation the person will work with their key worker to complete an Holistic Needs Assessment and their housing options will be examined and assessed by the local authority. This will result in a person centred support plan and move on housing options being agreed.
- Housing with supports – this housing support service will deliver person centred housing supports to the person who is residing as a tenant. Housing support will work to help establish, secure and sustain the tenancy, settle the person into their neighbourhood and community and support the person towards independent living and the realisation of their full potential and rights.
If you require further information please contact Lisa Kelleher on 01 2226838 or lisa.kelleher@dublincity.ie
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