The Greater Manchester Housing First partnership has had its contract extended to enable a sixth year of regional delivery.
The partnership, which is commissioned by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, will continue to deliver Housing First across the region until March 2025 following a review of delivery options involving all Local Authorities, Health and Housing representatives.
This will allow the partnership made up of 12 organisations along with the support of the wider services and localities to continue to deliver the service which has so far helped to find safe and secure accommodation for 367 people facing multiple disadvantage.
The Greater Manchester partnership is one of three Government funded pilots commissioned to test the Housing First model at scale – alongside the West Midlands and Liverpool City region since 2019.
Emily Cole, Programme Lead, said: “We are delighted that we are able to continue to deliver as a partnership for the final year of the current government funding, allowing us to continue to build on all that has been achieved in the past five years.
“The focus from now centres on the legacy of the programme and to ensure all the learning that has been generated from piloting the Housing First model at scale is fed into the wider system to catalyse change and ensure more people can benefit from support that is person-centred, trauma-informed and driven by the person - not dictated by service outcomes - when they need it.
“They say it takes a village to raise a child, well it takes a system to deliver Housing First which cannot be delivered successfully without systemic change. Housing First services can not be delivered as islands functioning outside of the system due to the barriers within it, and work arounds cannot continue to be made.
“Our focus is now on changing the system to enable the delivery of Housing First into the future that has the multi-agency accountability and support that it requires to ensure the intervention is successful and supports many more people experiencing multiple disadvantage.”