The Homelessness Reduction Bill has passed through the House of Commons last week. It will now move to the House of Lords for its first reading on the 24 February 2017.

As we reported last month, the new Bill places a duty on local authorities to help prevent the homelessness of all families and single people, regardless of priority need, who are eligible for assistance and threatened with homelessness.

A new duty is also placed on public services to notify a local authority if they come into contact with someone they think may be homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.

The legislation, originally a private members Bill tabled by Tory MP Bob Blackman, has been given wide cross-party support. Homeless charity Crisis thanked ministers and MPs who “came together from across the political spectrum” to move the legislation forward.

The Local Government Minister, Marcus Jones, announced that councils in England are to receive £61 million in funding to help them meet the costs of the legislation (rising from £48 million announced last week). The intention is that the distribution model for subsidy will reflect the differing need across various local authorities, and additional money may be made available for those in high-pressure areas to manage the transition as the new duties take effect.

He further announced that there would be a review of the implementation of the Bill, including the resourcing of it and how it is working in practice, after two years.

Despite amendments put to the Bill by both government and opposition members, the Bill safely travelled through both Report Stage and Third Reading. The Lords are set to have some issue with the commitment to funding after two years, but it is widely expected to pass through there too.

A quarter of the homeless people in Liverpool have nowhere to live because they are victims of domestic abuse, according to a local charity.

Jacqui Nasuh, founder of the Merseyside Domestic Violence Service, told the Liverpool Echo: “On average a women will be abused 38 times before they report domestic violence. The biggest problem with women not reporting domestic abuse is that they are afraid that they will have their children taken away.”

Another common feature of domestic abuse is the aggressor tries to control the victim, which means that it often goes unreported. “All the men have told us that if they had somewhere to go when things flare up they would leave the house,” said Jacqui. “Instead of having just female shelters we need to have places that men can go so we can keep families in their homes as much as possible.”

The problem of homelessness is getting worse, with 25% more people needing housing in 2015-16 compared to 2010-11, the majority of whom are women.

According to a review of homelessness carried out by Liverpool city council, 12,000 domestic abuse-related calls are made each year and the numbers are rising. Domestic abuse is six times the national average in North Liverpool and around double the national average in South Liverpool. More than 80% of people made homeless by domestic violence were women. Some are supported to stay in their home if the abuser has been arrested or does not live with them.

Councillor Frank Hont was critical of the coverage of rough sleeping which he claimed does not represent the majority of homeless people. In 2015-16, the housing options team was contacted 7,000 times, yet there are only 74 recorded rough sleepers in Liverpool. “When most people think of homelessness they think of rough sleepers because this is the visible end”, he said. “In really difficult times we’re still spending £10m on homelessness out of a tight budget because it’s such an important issue.”

Each year £3.1bn of public money is spent on services for domestic abuse such as the criminal justice system, social services, health, housing and legal aid.

Wirral student Elizabeth Pennington, 20, has photographed homeless people across the country for her project Hear My Voice, which she hopes will raise awareness of the issue.

Elizabeth, who studies at Sheffield Hallam University, said the project had ‘opened her eyes’. She told the Liverpool Echo, “When I first started approaching people, I felt quite nervous. It made me realise I definitely had my own preconceptions and prejudices and that’s what we all need to break down. The people I met were so open and honest with me,” she said.

“It was interesting to see the reactions of people walking past – at times it felt like I was being looked down on and some seemed unsure of my intentions towards the people I was photographing. It’s been a real education for me.”

“Being from more of a rural area, homelessness wasn’t really apparent to me growing up – so I became more aware of it whenever I would go into Liverpool city centre. It’s an issue that isn’t talked about enough in the media, so I want to try and raise awareness in anyway I could.”

One Liverpool man she photographed, Paul (41), told Elizabeth of how he had lived in South Africa and Spain for many years, working as an English teacher. However, he lost everything after becoming addicted to drugs.

His friend Marcel, 29, from Pensby in Wirral, had a successful career in journalism, working in the USA and Germany up until last year, when he entered rehab for drug addiction. He now lives on the streets and says he faces daily attacks from others in the homeless community for “being university educated”. He added: “I had everything and now I have nothing. I’m living in a haze.”

However, Elizabeth also met a woman called Cathy, 40, who lives on the streets with her husband John. She told Elizabeth that a lot of people think that everyone who’s homeless is addicted to drugs and alcohol, but she said that’s simply not true.

Asked if she felt she was treated differently by passers-by, because she’s a woman, she told Elizabeth: “No, it’s just the same – we still get ignored most of the time, regardless of gender.”

Elizabeth began Hear My Voice last summer and is hoping to hold an exhibition on Merseyside soon.

You can see more of her work by going to her website http://lizzypennington8.wixsite.com/epphotography/hear-my-voice

The housing charity Shelter predicted that 1,260 families in the capital will lose their home in the next month and 7,370 over the next six months – the equivalent of a household every 34 and 35 minutes respectively.

Shelter based its predictions on government homeless statistics and said more affordable homes must be built. Latest figures for the capital show that there are 43,820 homeless families, including 88,040 homeless children, in temporary accommodation.

Graeme Brown, Shelter’s interim chief executive, said: “Every day, we speak to homeless parents desperate to escape cramped emergency accommodation, where the whole family is often forced to share one room. With a chronic lack of affordable homes and welfare cuts continuing to take their toll, we expect to hear from even more families.”

The most recent government figures, from July to September last year, show that the number of households in temporary accommodation in Britain rose nine per cent on the same period in 2015. Of the 4,580 families accepted as becoming homeless in London, 40 per cent lost their home after a private tenancy came to an end.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan recently set out new planning rules to ease the housing crisis, by speeding up the building of more affordable housing, alongside £3.15 billion to support construction of 90,000 affordable homes.

Step Together is a new programme to be delivered by Venus to support women and young women who have had one or more children permanently removed into care.

The programme will run initially for 5 years and will provide support to 150 women over this time to address their needs to avoid what is – or could become – a recurring cycle. Many issues contribute to this cycle (such as domestic abuse, substance misuse, mental health and previous trauma) and half of these women are aged 24 and under. A study over a six-year period (2007 to 2013) showed that just over 7,000 birth mothers experienced nearly 23,000 babies and children taken into care.

Whilst care proceedings are active there are usually many services involved with the family. However, once the children have been removed from the mother’s care she is left with little or no support at a time when she is likely to be alone and depressed experiencing feelings of anger, loss and regret. At this point women are even more vulnerable to increased risk-taking and an downward spiral of mental health.

However, this is also a point at which appropriate interventions could engage birth-mothers in an intensive support programme which will stabilise their lives and work towards addressing their previous trauma and overcoming the complex range of issues and barriers they face. This is what Step Together aims to do by providing individual support and therapy through a co-designed support plan enhanced by the additional services below.

• Sexual health and contraception support, information and treatment will be provided every three months.
• Support to attend weekly substance misuse treatment and support.
• Domestic violence support to manage safety-planning, where these issues are priorities.
• Incredible Years or Triple P Parenting individual or group sessions.
• Weekly counselling sessions using a model appropriate to individual needs and therapeutic group work.
• Safer, Healthier and Empowered training course.
• Participation in project design and delivery.
• Home management support including life skills, cleaning, organisation and routines.
• Homeless prevention and housing related support and advocacy.
• Health support, including GP registration and liaison and mental health management.
• Financial resilience support, including benefit maximisation, budgeting, avoiding high interest and unregulated lending, credit unions and access to grants for household goods.

This project was launched at Venus in October 2016 but, due to the holistic and intensive nature the programme, is only expected to work with 20 women in the first year. This number is expected to rise by 5 each year to a total of 40 in year 5. We do hope we can do more but, obviously, there will be more demand than capacity so we will be hoping to liaise closely with referring agencies to identify the most appropriate referrals.

If you are interested in referring to our Step Together project, please contact Venus on 0151 474 4744, or make a referral through their website www.venuscharity.org