Calls for specialist mental health support for Southampton's homeless

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government data shows there were nine rough sleepers in Southampton during a spot check one night between October and November last year (2021).

This was down from 19 in 2020 and 15 in 2019, prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

A homelessness expert from Southampton says the city can do more to help help the homeless by setting up specialist mental health teams – as the problem is predicted to get worse amid the cost-of-living crisis.

Nick Maguire is an associate psychology professor at the University of Southampton.

He specialises in the psychology behind homelessness, and has worked for a large part of his career to improve the situation in Southampton.

As Southampton City Council looks to update its homelessness strategy by next year, Dr Maguire says that the key to improving the situation is ‘collaboration’.

He has pointed to a scheme running in Basingstoke that has gained widespread acclaim for keeping people off the streets.

The Basingstoke Social Inclusion Partnership is a group that Dr Maguire helped to set up, which offers a large amount of psychological support to the homeless.

Dr Maguire says the council in Southampton should “set up specialist homelessness mental health teams, building on the current Homeless Healthcare Team, and (secondly), set up a collaborative forum on the same lines as the Basingstoke Social Inclusion Partnership”.

The partnership helped to get homelessness in Basingstoke down from 26 in 2016 to eight in 2018, and the work that it does is reported to be admired and potentially implemented by groups from as far away as the United States and Australia.

The council’s renewal of its strategy comes at a time of drastic changes in the homeless landscape caused by the Covid pandemic, and at a time that Crisis, the homelessness organisation, predicts a one-third rise in homelessness in the UK by 2024.

On proposed changes, Dr Maguire said: “Firstly, consideration of the interaction of mental health and drug and alcohol issues, and how these two factors interact with help-seeking and the forms of tenancy that we provide and assume that people can manage.

“Secondly, structures are missing that purposively cause collaboration between agencies. There isn’t enough communication at the strategic level between agencies, resulting in some difficult interactions, sometimes driven by competitive tendering and commissioning processes.”

He added: “Child poverty is probably one of the most significant factors in terms of the number of people who become homeless, which is in turn linked to high wealth differential.

“In the shorter term, I think mental health and drug and alcohol issues, resulting from childhood neglect and abuse, and interacting with accommodation factors are the main factors.

"However early childhood abuse and neglect is also associated with poverty, all factors are linked I think.”

Southampton has a higher proportion of children living in poverty (30.3 per cent) than the average in England (27.3 per cent).

On the council’s current Homelessness Strategy, its statement reads: “Homelessness is a growing national issue, and Southampton City Council is committed to continuing to prevent homelessness across the city.

"This [the current] strategy is about more than rough sleepers, it’s about preventing all forms of homelessness, with a priority for families, to ensure children and young people get a good start in life.”

Councillor Lisa Mitchell, the council’s cabinet member for housing and the green environment, said: “Our Homelessness Strategy aims to protect people who are at risk of losing their home.

"Our Street Homeless Prevention Team also support rough sleepers and encourage those found sleeping out to take up the offers of help; by working alongside our partners in the city, the total number of people sleeping rough in Southampton halved last year.

“As household bills continue to rise and incomes are squeezed, we expect to receive more requests for help. We are currently reviewing this strategy, making sure we can respond to this changing picture and introducing a housing first approach.”

Current organisations that try to tackle the problem in the city include The Society of St James.

The Society Of St James has been running for 50 years and offers a range of services.

These services include a day centre which is the first point of contact for somebody who has found themselves homeless, self contained flats, and intensive help for rough sleepers, among many other services.

Chief executive officer Trevor Pickup praised the city council’s response to the problem over the duration of the current strategy.

He said: “The council has been doing a very reasonable job with homelessness, but the strategy is now out of date and the next one will have to have alterations.

“When the government announced they were going to get all homeless people in temporary accommodation, this was of course fabulous for the homeless situation in Southampton. With all the money coming in we were able to house them in shelters, hostels and even rented student accommodation.

“The general view is that the council will now have to take the effects of Covid into account when deciding on what to include in the next strategy.”

Southampton also has food banks that people in need can use.

One such food bank is co-run by Simon Oldham.

He said: “We run Food Clubs, which is a pantry model where people pay a small fee to access a bag of goods.

“We’re there for people to get hold of food and other goods such as cleaning products at a more affordable rate. We see it as a hand up not a hand (out) and as solidarity nor charity. We’re there for people to stop them dropping into food insecurity and help lift the help from food poverty.”

He added: “To help supplement this we partnered with Southampton City Mission who run food banks across the city.

"We collect goods and donations before every Saints game to make sure we are both growing the stock but also awareness to the need food poverty and the cost of living crisis in our city. Brings football fans and city together, but also those across the country.

“We also work with other groups in the city such as the excellent Hamwic Street Kitchen by proving our surplus or stock so they can give out both packages and cooked food to those on the street.”

Mr Oldham said what he has seen change recently.

“We have seen massive growth over last few months from 50 to around 120 households a week," he said.

“Also the tone has changed from one of 'thanks this really helpful' to 'thanks goodness you’re here' or 'we’d struggle to feed ourselves and kids if we didn’t come here'.

“We regularly hear stories of choice between food and rent, or heating or cooking.

"We try to be the balance to help them out while being to be part and participate, while running community cafes with free tea and coffee at two of our sites to bring members and communities together.”

The Sheriff of Southampton, Councillor Valerie Laurent is another advocate for helping those in need. She helps to run a free Sunday lunch, every week in the city centre.

She says: “There is such thing as a free lunch if you are in need.”

On the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the group hosted a large party, all free, to anybody that needed it.

Across England, the number of rough sleepers fell from 2,690 in 2020 to 2,440 last year (2021)

It also represented a 43 per cent decrease compared to 2019, when 4,270 rough sleepers were recorded.

The fall in rough sleeper rates, nationally, could be a result of the government’s decision to provide extra funding to local authorities such as Southampton, to temporarily accommodate rough sleepers in the height of the pandemic. This was an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus throughout the homeless community.

However, with the cost of living crisis and the impact that the pandemic had on mental health, both of which are proven contributors to homelessness, rates are now predicted to rise significantly.

In fact, Crisis, the organisation that collects and alanlyses homelessness statistics predicts a one-third rise in rough sleepers by 2024.

In 2018, when the council first implemented its current Homelessness Strategy, Southampton had 264 homeless people. This works out to be 2.53 people per 1,000 households and was just above England’s figure of 2.49 per 1,000 households.