Tom Hayes

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) for calling this debate. People sleeping rough often have important things in common. They often have several support needs, such as mental ill health, substance misuse, an offending history, physical disability, self-harm, learning disabilities, experience of domestic abuse, sex work, abuse, neglect and modern slavery—pretty much some of the worst things a person can go through. But they also often do not get the entirety of the services and support they need, when they need them, in the ways they need them. Frankly, that is the fault of nobody—certainly not the person sleeping rough—except the last Conservative Government. I say that with the immediate and direct experiences of having run a mental health and domestic abuse charity for the five years before I was elected, of setting up and sitting on a homelessness alliance, of chairing a mental health partnership, of being a councillor for 10 years and of serving as deputy council leader in that time. I can tell the House that over the 14 years of Conservative government, this problem got worse and worse. I want to commend those leading and working in our services, because they are the most amazing, caring, understanding, dedicated people. We have heard from some of those people who are now in Parliament. In my constituency of Bournemouth East, I want to commend Bournemouth Churches Housing Association; St Paul’s Hostel, which is run by BCHA; HealthBus; YMCA Bournemouth; Healthwatch Dorset, which has just produced a fantastic report on homelessness and health; Homewards, represented by the Prince of Wales; WithYou; We Are Humans; the citizens advice bureaux across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole; and Shelter. That goes to show the array of services available in my local area, but the services they lead and the systems they contribute are being held back by forces beyond their control. Underfunding has forced services to narrow and narrow their focus, year after year. As a result, they are meeting a smaller set of needs. Services cannot wrap support around as many needs as they would have done in the past; instead, somebody sleeping rough must engage with a larger set of services. No charity has wanted to narrow its focus, but, left out of pocket, and often subsidising contracts, they just could not carry on delivering services without enough funding. The result is twofold. First, our third sector’s ability to support clients and contribute to healthcare has been eroded year after year, and secondly, the people needing support who no longer fit the referral criteria for a service will end up being bounced from pillar to post, and people with a combination of issues will always be the exception to somebody’s rule. People who are willing to engage may become distrustful of agencies and refuse services, and that is a particular problem when people who are sleeping rough may, because of their needs, have difficulties keeping appointments. When people are flying through revolving doors, increasingly distrustful of people and services, and feeling let down, they may experience crises. Without the support they need, that will only set back their health and increase the cost not only to their own health but to services that could wrap around them. Prevention is always cheaper and better than having to treat somebody’s health. The people in Bournemouth East working in these sectors know exactly what is going wrong, they know exactly what needs to happen, and they know exactly how things could be so much better. They tell me what needs to happen. They are clear that we need sufficient funding to run the services to meet the needs of rough sleepers. What will that buy? First, it will mean that we have enough caseworkers with the time to care, because a flexible approach is needed to engage people with multiple support needs who may slip through the net of services. People sleeping rough typically benefit from longer-term interactions, and we need to understand that the funding should be available for those longer-term interactions rather than for short interventions. Secondly, we need funding models that appreciate that work can go at a slower pace to achieve useful outcomes. That means having a system with the clarity, and the time to achieve that clarity, for the people working within it but also for the people accessing support. Thirdly—and this cannot go ignored—caseworkers who are supporting people sleeping rough need to be at their posts in their organisations for a long period of time, uninterrupted, to develop relationships with the people they support and build trust. If they have to get out of bed worrying about whether they can pay their bills, or worrying about their own mental health, they are not going to be able to provide support to the people who need it the most. That requires taking away the reasons caseworkers may leave the service: not getting paid enough to survive; not being able to develop professionally with the training and new skills that they need; or having their resilience beaten down because they support too many people, their caseloads are too high and the needs they are meeting are so many, so varied and so complex. I recently visited the Poole campus of Bournemouth and Poole college. I talked to the head, Phil Sayles, and he told me about a chap who had been sleeping rough on the park grass beside the college campus. Every morning, he had packed up his tent to come into the college and learn. His relationship had broken down and he was unable to see his child; his life had fallen apart. But with the kindness and support of the college and the services around him, he was able to start to get his life back on track, and he is now flying. That is one person on one campus of one college, in one town in one part of our United Kingdom; there will be countless people across our country in similar situations. I commend the Government for moving forward with the endeavour for a cross-departmental long-term strategy. We have ended rough sleeping before, during the pandemic; we can end it again. We just need the necessary political will, and the people who know what the solutions are to be listened to.