Ending homelessness together: annual report to the Scottish Parliament, November 2024

Progress against actions to embed a person-centred approach

1. Develop the evidence base on homelessness and review the homelessness data collection

2. Apply a gendered analysis to our actions and conduct equality impact assessments, ensuring the homelessness system meets the needs of diverse groups of women, including the needs of mothers and children

3. Ensure homelessness services are grounded in no wrong door and person-centred principles and make homelessness assessments more flexible

4. Raise public awareness of homelessness and challenge stigma

5. [New] Consider and respond to the recommendations of the measuring impact task and finish group

• Our future homelessness data collections will take into account the proposed new statutory homelessness prevention duties.
• We will complete the review of our homelessness datasets by the end of 2025 and implement agreed changes by the end of 2027.
• We have commissioned research into housing insecurity and hidden homelessness to better understand those people who do not appear in Scotland’s official figures. We have asked the contractors to consider the impact of gender. Findings are expected later in 2024.
• Shelter Scotland has commissioned De Montfort University and University College London to explore children’s experiences of temporary accommodation. Scottish Government and Public Health Scotland (PHS) officials sit on the peer advisory group. The research, which is expected to conclude in winter 2024, is part funded by PHS.
• Our new homelessness prevention duties will be faithful to the principle of no wrong door and will ensure people get the help they need irrespective of where the risk of homelessness is first identified.
• We continued our funding for the Change Team in 2024-25. The team acts as a feedback loop between people experiencing homelessness and decision makers in government to ensure policies are grounded in reality.
• Scotland’s housing minister continues to raise awareness of homelessness and engage with those with lived and frontline experience of homelessness. The last year’s engagements include speaking slots at Scotland's annual homelessness conference in October 2023 and October 2024; a visit to Simon Community Scotland’s access hub in December 2023; housing debates in the Scottish Parliament in November 2023, May 2024 and October 2024; the Change Team roadshow on 5 March 2024; a visit to a housing initiative for women who have experienced domestic abuse in April 2024; and a visit to young people in supported accommodation in July 2024.
• In December 2023, the measuring impact task and finish group published its recommendations on how to improve the way we measure the impact of measures to end homelessness in Scotland. The Scottish Government is considering the report and working with the group chairs to reach agreement on a final set of indicators.