Finding the Way Home Should housing-led services be employed in Ireland to tackle Drawing on the positive lessons from housing-led services, both long term homelessness? The answer is probably yes, but it is a as a philosophy and as a practical model of service delivery, qualified yes. There is certainly enough evidence from around the Finnish example shows how a national homelessness the World to suggest that housing-led services may have real strategy can be a positive process of managed cooperative applicability to Ireland and that it may help - indeed is likely to - change involving homelessness service providers. Working improve housing outcomes for people with high support needs jointly with the homelessness sector to draw upon the known who are long term homeless. This was a view that the research advantages of housing-led approaches and modifying rather found was shared by most service providers and people who than replacing existing homelessness services would seem a were homeless. However, while there are good reasons to logical and perhaps more affordable course for Ireland than explore using housing-led services in Ireland, there are also seeking to replace one set of existing services with another, good reasons not to rush into a wholesale adoption of the particularly when the differences between existing services and housing-led approach under what may be a false assumption housing-led services may not always be that great. that it will necessarily be dramatically more cost effective than existing services, or to assume it can solve long term homelessness entirely on its own. The lessons from Finland may be particularly useful to the implementation of a housing-led approach in Ireland103. The Finnish approach has been one not of replacement of existing homelessness services by one housing-led model but instead a managed modification of homelessness service provision alongside the development of some new services. Existing hostels and emergency accommodation have been modified to a CHF model, with a mix of PHF and HFL services also being used, the ideas of housing-led services being used to both modify existing services and to develop a range of housing-led approaches. 103 Busch-Geertsema, V. (2010) op cit; Kaakinen, J. (2012) op cit. 32
Finding the Way Home
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