Press Release

TWIN RESEARCH COMMITMENTS BRING HOMELESS LINK’S AMBITION OF ENDING HOMELESSNESS ONE STEP CLOSER

16 May 2008

Homeless Link welcomes the Conservative Party’s Homelessness Foundation and the new £700,000 ESRC research programme into multiple exclusion homelessness

Yesterday, David Cameron launched the Conservative Party’s Homelessness Foundation. He set out the Conservative Party’s ambition to "once and for all - end homelessness in our country… We have some of the most compassionate and caring people in the country who know how to get results and get peoples' lives back on track. We can tackle homelessness. I mean it."

The Homelessness Foundation is intended to help show the way. Jenny Edwards, Chief Executive of Homeless Link will chair its Advisory Panel, which Mr Cameron described as " the best minds in the business - all the leaders of all the major homeless charities in our country" who will be "working with the Foundation so that when we come to government we have a real, proper and serious plan to deal with this social evil". 

At the same time, at the national homelessness research conference, Homeless Link announced that the ESRC has committed to funding and coordinating a groundbreaking new research programme into improving the evidence base around "multiple exclusion homelessness" which will start this year. The fund totals £700,000 and includes funding from the Housing Corporation, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Communities & Local Government and the Department of Health. 

Jenny Edwards, Chief Executive of Homeless Link, the umbrella organisation for frontline homelessness agencies in England, said:  "We applaud these two initiatives. Such significant moves on the same day reveal that there is now intense interest in finding the solutions to the long-standing social evil of homelessness for once and for all. Everyone recognises that the causes are complex and diverse but we know that solutions exist, they are found every day for individuals. Now is the time for evidence of the systemic causes of homelessness which can inform plans of action at every level to cut off the feeder routes and prevent homelessness before it begins."

Both initiatives focus on a holistic and in-depth approach to the needs and experience of individuals and identifying points where systems fail. Jenny added "This is a pivotal moment where we are on the path to understand and solve the causes of homelessness."

• Copyright 2008 Dod's Parliamentary Communications Ltd
• About ePolitix.com
• Stakeholders
• Contacts
• Terms & Conditions
• Blog guidelines