Presentation given by Lars Benjaminsen during the "Embedding Housing First at service delivery level: key barriers and opportunities" seminar at the FEANTSA 2014 Policy Conference, "Confronting homelessness in the EU: Seeking out the next generation of best practices", 24-25 October 2014, Bergamo (Italy)

1. Lars Benjaminsen
The Danish National Center for Social Research
Capacity-building of local services to implement Housing First

2. Danish homelessness strategy 2009-2013 and follow-up programme 2014-2016
•Housing First as overall principle
•Test whether Housing First works well in a Danish context
•Develop evidence based floating support methods - Assertive Community Treatment, Intensive Case Management, Critical Time Intervention
•Implement a mindshift away from Housing Ready approach to Housing First
•17 municipalitites participated in 2009-2013 programme
•23 participates in follow-up programme – ‘Implementation and anchoring programme’.

3. Recovery and empowerment focus
•Early stabilization of housing situation with intensive support facilitates recovery
•Citizen’s perspective – what can we do for you? How can we help you?
•Assertive dialogue – the support worker gives input based on empathy and professional competences
•Strength-based approach – building on resources, capacities
•Strengthening the citizens life situation in a range of domains – housing, economy, health, activities, social network etc.

4. The organization of the provision of housing and support
•Denmark has a large public housing sector – 20 % of total housing stock. ½ million units in a population of 5,5 mill. people (open to all through waiting lists regardless of income level)
•Municipalities can allocate 1 in 4 vacancies in public housing to people in acute housing need – e.g. single mothers, handicapped, mentally ill, homeless people
•Local social services are anchored in municipalities - floating support is mainly provided from municipalities.

5. Floating support programme
•Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) Multidiciplinary support team – social support workers, nurse, psychiatrist, addiction treatment specialist, social office worker, job office worker
•Intensive Case Management (ICM) Case manager – social and practical support and coordination of use of other services
•Critical Time Intervention (CTI) Time-limited case management (9 months) – social and practical support and coordination of use of other services. 3 systematic phases

6. Very positive results – Housing First works
•Housing First works for most homeless people – 9 out of 10 who were housed maintained their housing (About 1000 people were housed through the programme
•People whom we never thought could have been housed have been housed
•We cannot predict in advance who will fail
•Independent scattered housing in ordinary housing is better for most homeless people
•Problems with congregate housing - often conflicts arise amongst residents, noise, environnement of addiction problems making recovery difficult

7. The follow up programme (2014-2016)
•Extend the housing first model to more municipalities
•More focus on training of social workers
•More focus on implementation processes
•Fidelity measurement
•Manualisation of interventions
•A specific youth programme – adapting floating support methods specifically to young homeless people

8. Training and manualisation
•Training was underemphasised in the first programme
•The follow-up programme will have a stronger training component – Trainers from the National Board of Social Welfare will train local social workers in the floating support methods
•Train the trainer courses (TTT-courses) are held
•Manualisation – very specific manuals on how to conduct the support – underlying principles, how to approach the citizen, key tasks, phases (CTI), multidiscplinary work (ACT), support in key life domains (housing, economy, health, activities, social network). Checklists.
•Supported by web based tools

9. Further information
•Lars Benjaminsen lab@sfi.dk
The Danish National Center of Social Research
•European Journal of Homelessness, Volume 7 (2):
Policy Review Up-date: Results from the Housing First
based Danish Homelessness Strategy