Example Case Study and Discussion Check List
Jas and her three children are victims of domestic abuse and following several call outs to police, she leaves with her three children (aged 13, 10, and 5) and attends the Domestic Abuse Home Options Hub to seek safe accommodation.
There are no available spaces in refuge accommodation in Birmingham or the region. She does not want to leave the West Midlands, and the family is placed in temporary accommodation near Birmingham Airport.
Jas has no money and needs to make an application for Universal Credit (UC) in her name, and in the meantime has no money for food and basic living resources. She is given some basic food that does not require a cooker as there is no kitchen or storage space for food and there are no shops locally. The family live on sandwiches or burgers from a shop in the airport.
For the following four weeks the family live day to day in this way until UC is paid.
The children are not enrolled in school.
After four weeks, Jas receives a text telling her to check out of the hotel the next morning. The address of a new hotel has been included as their next destination, five miles away.
Jas still has not received her UC; the family eat out of the local corner shop for the following week.
Jas calls the DA Home Options Hub
a further two times before a refuge spaces opens up with enough room for them all.
The refuge provides a self-contained flat with a kitchen area. Jas and her family are given food, clothing and toys from the donations.
Jas is supported to begin the bidding process to secure permanent housing, as well as receiving specialist domestic violence support for what she has experienced. Jas and her family are equipped with safety plans.
The children are enrolled into a local school, with reluctance from the eldest.
On average, women and their children spend up to two and a half years in a refuge before moving on.
Around 10% of women are thought to go back to their previous homes, and live with perpetrators again.
Example Questions for Jas’ Case Study -
What do we already do, and is currently in place, to prevent and relieve homelessness?
-
What is in our organisation’s universal prevention space that would assist Jas, or someone like her? What is our universal prevention space? How do we know if people such as Jas are at risk of falling out of that universal prevention space? How do we deal with crisis? How do we help Jas to recover and move on and remain within our universal prevention space?
-
What do we have in the universal prevention space? Consider the organisation as an employer; our supply chain; our partners and so on.
-
How do we as an organisation or team contribute to keeping Jas in our mainstream system?
-
How do we identify that Jas is at risk of falling out of our mainstream system?
-
What action do we currently take? Could we do more to keep people involved?
-
What do we already do to ensure Jas’ homelessness crisis has as small an impact on her and her children as possible?
-
What do we do in regard to re-establishing her protections against homelessness and dealing with the causes and impact of homelessness that Jas requires?
-
What processes are already in place to ensure this is effective?
-
What processes and approaches do we have that are already in place to ensure Jas and her children don’t experience homelessness again later in life?
-
How are we involved in crisis prevention, relief and recovery?
-
How can our current activity be moved into universal or targeted prevention to ensure this crisis does not happen in the first place?
-
What are our key priorities in regards to homelessness?
-
Which organisations do we already have relationships with?
-
What statistics already exist that indicate our impact on homelessness? What data and intelligence do we already have?