Evaluating homelessness prevention in Newcastle

Irving, Adele; Fitzpatrick, Suzanne; Harding, Jamie; Pawson, Hal; Sosenko, Filip

Abstract

Newcastle City Council (NCC) and the Council’s arms length management organisation (ALMO)
Your Homes Newcastle (YHN) invited Heriot-Watt University and Northumbria University to
evaluate the ways the two organisations work together to prevent homelessness. The main
purpose of the evaluation was to extract transferable lessons that may be of interest to other
local authorities.

The research questions were as follows:

How effective are the homelessness prevention activities and services delivered by the
City Council and YHN?
To what extent can it be said that relevant services within the City Council and YHN have
established a culture of homelessness prevention?
How effectively is homelessness prevention activity led, co-ordinated and managed?
Is it possible to demonstrate the financial and social policy value of these initiatives?

The methods employed in the study included: a review of key policy documents; in-depth
interviews with 20 key informants in the city; focus group discussions with front-line staff in the
city (17 front-line staff participated); and secondary data analysis of official Department for
Communities and Local Government homelessness statistics and unpublished additional data
collected by NCC and YHN.

Citation

Irving, A., Fitzpatrick, S., Harding, J., Pawson, H., & Sosenko, F. (2011). Evaluating homelessness prevention in Newcastle. Newcastle City Council

• Report Type: Research Report
• Publication Date: Oct 28, 2011
• Deposit Date: Aug 30, 2024