Dr. Kathy Walsh:

I will speak about our study, entitled Finding a Home, of families' journeys out of homelessness. It involved interviews with a cross-section of 25 families across the four Dublin local authority areas. I will cover three findings: what enabled people to exit homelessness; what inhibited people from exiting it; and what were the factors that helped people to sustain their tenancies. Mr. Harvey will present on the conclusions and recommendations.

We identified three exit enablers, the first of which was the availability of support, specifically information and case management support from Focus Ireland workers; support from child support workers where available; and support from family and friends. The second enabler was the capacity and tenacity of parents to engage with local authorities and private rental landlords. This linked to their time spent in homelessness. The longer they were in homelessness, the less able they appeared to be to engage with those different structures. The third enabler was the particular family circumstances. Some families had certain reasons for trying to get out of emergency accommodation, for example, an unplanned pregnancy, someone was unwell or claustrophobia was an issue. These were drivers.

Of the inhibitors from exiting homelessness, the first was the high stress levels and negative emotions linked to living in emergency accommodation. The consequences include relationship breakdown, addiction, behavioural problems in children and poor performance in school. The second was the lack of suitable affordable accommodation in general and in preferred areas of Dublin, specifically near family supports and schools. The third was the lack of case management and child support work. Families often had to wait a long time before being allocated a key worker. The fourth was the practical difficulties associated with finding the necessary child care to enable parents to attend accommodation viewings and secure accommodation.

In contrast, the five factors that helped sustain new tenancies were: affordable rent, ideally deducted at source, with a sense of security for families lucky enough to have been allocated local authority or approved housing body, AHB, accommodation, which was a game changer; the quality, suitability and location of accommodation where it was close to families, friends and schools that made life much easier; the availability of the exceptional needs payment from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, which was a considerable support in fitting out accommodation and enabling families to avoid falling into unnecessary debt; where families had previous experience of living independently, matters moved more quickly, but where families had not lived independently previously, it was a significant challenge; and the shorter the length of time a family spent in homelessness, the quicker the parents and the children were able to adjust to independent living.