Oxfordshire's Homelessness Alliance

Oxfordshire is a large county made up of four district council areas and the City of Oxford. 750,000 people live in the county, concentrated in Oxford and large market towns; significant areas of the county are rural.

Homelessness is a key issue within the county, exacerbated by relatively high house prices, particularly in the south of the county. Most people who sleep rough do so in the City and this is where most of the supported accommodation and support services are concentrated. Although the City of Oxford has the highest levels of homelessness, we know that tackling homelessness needs to be a collective and county wide effort, with many of the housing solutions lying outside the City.

A strong and emerging partnership of statutory and voluntary community sector partners have been working over the long term to prevent and resolve homelessness. There is also a high level of commitment to ending homelessness and to finding better solutions which are centred around people’s needs and aspirations.

Strategic context: The vision and priorities for ending homelessness are set out in the County

Wide Strategy as follows:

Vision: To prevent and resolve homelessness, so that no one sleeps rough in Oxfordshire.

Principles:

 We treat people in need of our services with respect

 We acknowledge people as individuals and work with their strengths

 We work in a ‘psychologically informed way’, understanding how past trauma and adverse childhood experiences affect people who experience homelessness

 We actively involve people affected by homelessness in identifying solutions and offer choice wherever possible

 We focus on the health, wellbeing and quality of life of people who experience homeless, addressing the whole person, not just housing needs

 We co-operate to deliver a co-ordinated and consistent service across the county

Priorities:

 Proactively prevent homelessness

 Rapid response to rough sleeping

 Focus on the person, not the problem

 Timely move on

 The right home in the right place

We are commissioning for outcomes and inviting Alliances, made up of a minimum of four providers, to tell us how they will organise themselves to collectively deliver on these outcomes. Separate but identical contracts will be held with each member of the alliance.

As statutory organisations, we will work with the successful Alliance to design a system that will enable the vision - To prevent and resolve homelessness, so that no one sleeps rough in Oxfordshire - to become a reality. This is a shift away from our historical commissioning approach where service volumes rather than outcomes were specified and fixed.