Survey aims to help to ease homeless plight
Posted on 29 January 2009
The survey, by the University’s Centre for Housing Policy and the market research company BMRB, will gauge the views of homeless people facing multiple challenges including drug and alcohol dependency and severe mental health problems.
The results will provide an important tool in addressing the needs of some of the most disadvantaged people in society
Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick
Fieldworkers will talk to homeless people in six cities across the UK – Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, London and Belfast – as part of a research programme backed by Homeless Link, the national umbrella organisation for frontline homelessness charities.
The programme is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Tenants’ Services Authority and the Department of Health.
It has been devised to inform Government policy and practice and to help to find solutions to bring vulnerable homeless people in from the margins of society. The Director of CHP, Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick said: "This is a hard to reach group, so we are going to contact them through ‘low threshold’ services such as day centres that they are likely to use. The results will provide an important tool in addressing the needs of some of the most disadvantaged people in society."
The two-year project is a partnership with leading voluntary sector service providers, who will nominate local co-ordinators to assist the survey teams, and with Shelter, the national housing and homelessness charity.
ENDS
Notes to editors:
- More information on the Centre for Housing Policy at the University of York is available at www.york.ac.uk/inst/chp/