Using Evidence to End Homelessness by Cartwright James & Ligia Teixeira

Author:Cartwright James & Ligia Teixeira [James, Cartwright & Teixeira, Ligia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447352860
Goodreads: 52062070
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2020-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

8

Why evidence matters

Jonathan Breckon and Emma Taylor-Collins

It is tempting to think that homelessness is something to file under the ‘Too Difficult Box’ of social conundrums, an issue that cannot be addressed at the street level, only at the level of government policies on affordable housing, social security and poverty reduction.

Of course, social trends and national policies are at the heart of problems relating to homelessness and we need answers that look at whole systems, such as youth justice, mental health and child protection.1 And those on the frontline – public servants, charity workers and commissioners – need to make urgent decisions to help people experiencing homelessness. That means they need access to the best available evidence to use alongside their professional judgement and practitioner experience, and a culture of rigorous evaluation to ensure continual learning and improvement. Problems may be systemic and complicated, but that cannot distract us from trying to work out which programmes and interventions might do the most good.

In the field of homelessness, we are currently missing a strong evidence base on homelessness interventions. Until fairly recently, this was the case in education, too – it was not until the late 1990s that the concept of ‘evidence-informed practice’ really started to emerge in the UK (Hanley et al, 2016). Now, thanks to initiatives like researchED and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), the picture is vastly different, and more than half the schools in England have been involved in one of EEF’s randomised controlled trials (RCTs) (Nevill, 2019). Whole ecosystems of organisations, individuals and networks grow around these kinds of movements, which we have also seen in other policy areas – some of them planned and wide-ranging, like the Campbell Collaboration or the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence; others more sporadic, single-issue grassroot outfits, such as the Society for Evidence-Based Policing, researchED Evidence for the Frontline and Coalition for Evidence-Based Education. We now have a rich tapestry of different organisations providing and advocating for evidence of what works across social policy. The Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) is a full member of the growing UK What Works Network. It shows us that a shift towards evidence-informed practice is possible in the homelessness field, too.

Evidence might not provide easy answers but can provide better bets on what direction to go in – a smarter way of working than simply throwing money and resources at problems. Some of our best efforts to improve people’s lives may do nothing to help, waste money or even do harm. In health, 156 medical practices were flagged up to be unsafe or ineffective in a study funded by the Australian Department of Health and Ageing (Elshaug et al, 2012). Conversely, we may have the opposite problem: all interventions seem to work equally well – the so-called ‘dodo bird effect’, discussed in more detail later in this chapter (Forrester, 2015).

If this is the case, then which initiative to choose? Can we find out more on what works for whom, where and why? At

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