New team to tackle homelessness in the Highlands
18th September 2010
The Highland Council is to establish a dedicated team to reduce the growing number of homeless individuals and families in the Highlands.
The move by the Housing and Social Work Committee aims to help the Council meet the target set by the Scottish Government to ensure that all unintentionally homeless people have access to permanent housing by 2012.
Most recent figures highlight that at any time there are around 1,300 households in temporary accommodation and that 2,300 homeless applications are being received each year.
At the same time, 53% of all social rent housing allocations are to homeless households.
The homeless team will be based in the Council's Housing and Property Service and will come from within existing resources, such as accommodation officers and those staff with an existing remit for homelessness.
Their role will be to offer housing options advice and adopt a preventative approach, including engagement with the private rented sector. At the same time the Council has developed a new approach for assessing and planning to meet the housing needs of the small proportion of homeless people who have multiple or complex needs, such as alcohol or substance misuse. This approach involves working more closely with partner agencies to assess, plan and engage with these clients in order to prevent homelessness.
Councillor Margaret Davidson, Chairman of the Housing and Social Work Committee, said: "The formation of the team, together with other measures, are aimed at improving the way we deal with homelessness to reduce assessments and provide more effective services for clients with multiple/complex needs. Hopefully, this will reduce the number of people presenting as homeless and get more people into decent homes "
Related Businesses
Related Articles
As intimated in Highland Council's budget plan, a new senior management structure is to be implemented following approval by Council 14th March. It reconfigures the senior management team into two layers, rather than three and brings Highland Council into line with other benchmarked authorities.
Today, Morrison Construction introduced some of their local apprentices who are working on the UK Governments' Levelling Up Funded refurbishment project at the Northern Meeting Park in Inverness. All these apprentices have been recruited from the Highland area.
The by-election to elect a councillor to represent Ward 19 - Inverness South on The Highland Council has been won by Duncan Cameron McDonald - Independent who was one of the eight candidates who contested the vacancy. Voters in the ward went to the poll yesterday (Thursday 11 April) and the by-election count was held this morning in The Highland Council Headquarters in Inverness.
The Technology Placement Programme offers funding to businesses in the Highland Council area to cover up to 70% of the cost of employing a student or graduate. The Technology Placement Programme offers funding to businesses in the Highland Council area to cover up to 70% of the cost of employing a student or graduate.
Following the success of its Business Digital Grant scheme launched last year, The Highland Council is delighted to announce further funding. This is to help Highland companies access digital support alongside other business growth support.
The Highland Council is delighted to confirm a highly successful second year for Public Service Obligation (PSO) flights between Wick and Aberdeen. The period from April 2023 to March 2024 has seen a substantial increase in passenger numbers, with several months seeing over 1,000 passengers using the service, and overall the service has seen year on year growth of 25%.
Members of Highland Council, who met on Thursday 14 March 2024, approved a corporate Digital Ambition, which has been designed to deliver significant organisational change across Council services, recognising the current priorities within the organisation. The Strategy, which is embedded within the wider Council Delivery Plan, has been developed to focus attention and resources on areas of change which will deliver the greatest benefit to the Council.
The Council remains committed to supporting mentoring in our schools, including the support that is currently delivered through the MCR Pathways programme. Highland Council is currently undertaking a review of Employability Support provided by a number of different council services and how these relate to the work carried out by external partners and in our schools.
Highland Council members have considered and agreed a revised draft Highland Outcome Improvement Plan. The partnership plan has been reviewed and updated by the Community Planning Partnership.
Members at today's (14 March 2024) meeting of The Highland Council agreed the local authority's new draft Community Wealth Building Strategy. They were also asked to note that a period of public engagement on the draft will now begin, with a final strategy returning to full Council for consideration in September.
