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Referral Routes Into Hostels In London
We are extremely grateful to our colleagues at RIS for providing us with the following data, which is very illuminating in terms of recent discussions around access routes into hostels and the effects of local connection on those routes.
Background
As you are no doubt aware, over recent years there has been a significant decrease in the numbers of homeless accommodation projects that will accept self-referrals and a large increase in those that only accept referrals from named agencies.
Referral Routes
A simple analysis of data from 402 project database entries from Homeless London in May 2008 revealed the following numbers of projects that will accept self-referrals, referrals from any agency and/or referrals only from named agencies (NB projects can accept more than one source of referrals).
In summary, these figures show that:
- Only a quarter of quick access hostels and about a quarter (91 out 402) of accommodation projects overall now accept self referrals
- 43% of quick access hostels and 45% of accommodation projects overall can accept referrals from any agency
- Two thirds of quick access projects now accept referrals from named agencies
- Second stage projects overall have the most restricted referrals routes: the lowest proportions of projects that can accept self referrals or referrals from any agency, and highest proportion of projects that accept referrals from named agencies
- Specialist accommodation projects tend to have the most open referral routes: a third accept self referrals and over half accept referrals from any agency
The Effect of Local connection
Similarly, there has been an increase in the number of accommodation projects that now have some sort of requirements for applicants to have a local connection.
The table shows that:
- Only a quarter of quick access hostels and less than a fifth of second stage accommodation projects now accept applicants without some sort of local connection
- Over a third of specialist accommodation projects accept people without a local connection
- There are few projects that can accept self referrals and applicants without a local connection, apart from specialist accommodation projects where about a quarter of them can do so.
Next Steps
Homeless Link will be passing this information onto our various contacts with local, regional and national government in London as part of the ongoing dialogue about the impact of referral routes and local connection. We will have a look at the potential usefulness of a quick survey to see if agencies feel that restrictions on referral routes are having any positive or negative impact on services' work with people who are homeless.
Meanwhile anyone with any comments, please send them to