Homelessness taskforce webinars
The WMCA Homelessness Taskforce brings together local councils, charities, and regional partners to design out homelessness.
Access our library of recorded webinars below to discover innovative solutions, learn from industry experts, and support community initiatives across the region.
Homelessness Taskforce Webinar February 2026
This webinar provides an overview of the national homelessness strategy and its key priorities, alongside an update on the work of the WMCA Homelessness Taskforce. The session explores the importance of regional collaboration, shared approaches and system leadership, as well as what these priorities mean in practice for partners working across the West Midlands to prevent and relieve homelessness.
Commitment To Collaborate Re-Launch Webinar, December 2025
This webinar introduces the re-launch of the Commitment to Collaborate (C2C) toolkit and Positive Pathways model, exploring how organisations can work together to strengthen homelessness prevention and support for young people.
Private Rented Sector Report Webinar November 2025
This webinar provides an overview of the WMCA’s work within the private rented sector. It also includes discussion around opportunities for collaboration and innovation to help strengthen homelessness prevention activity across the region.
Homelessness Taskforce Webinar Oct 2024
Earlier in 2024 the WMCA Homelessness Taskforce funded three further small scale ‘proof of concept’ projects testing out different aspects of how digital responses or data driven insights could help promote early prevention of homelessness. This webinar covers the work done by Birmingham City Council on how data insights can drive system change. Well worth watching!
This webinar provides some insights into, and ways of tackling, the challenge of creating long term change in complex systems. Taking a ‘mission’ lead approach to building consensus and alliances that can help overcome some of the pressure to focus on short term solutions to systemic issues.
Testing out new ways of engaging people with early prevention using social media and behavioural insights
The webinar highlights two ‘proof of concept projects' we funded in 2023 that tested out new approaches to engaging people and encouraging them to seek help before they hit crisis point to help prevent homelessness. The first project tested out using a variety of social media platforms and messages to encourage families to seek help early and the second project tested out how behavioural insights can be used to refine contact methods and messaging with families at risk of homelessness.
RSI Outcomes and Outputs Webinar
A presentation to help you to understand, in the context of RSI funding, what the difference is between an output and outcome, why this is important and what the implications are of that for your funding application or RSI project.
Children’s Early Help Services and homelessness prevention
Presentations from three Local Authority Children’s Early Help programmes that have included a focus on homelessness prevention for families as a core part of their work.
Benefits, barriers and Opportunities for young people transitioning out of Homelessness
A presentation by Loughborough University of the findings of recent research ‘Living or Surviving?’ jointly commissioned with St Basils. The research focuses on the impact of the current benefits system on the ability of young people to move on from supported accommodation into independent living and work. Plus a presentation by Mybnk of the work they are doing on financial inclusion and literacy in the region.
Universal and targeted homelessness prevention with young people, children and families
Two presentations highlighting complimentary approaches to prevention of homelessness. The first one from Birmingham outlining the work of the SEMH Pathfinder project and its approach to work with children and families in schools in the City. The second presentation from Upstream Cymru in Wales outlining their work with very early prevention with young people in secondary schools in Wales.
Universal Prevention
Universal prevention reframes the responsibility for reducing homelessness from specialist housing and homelessness teams to all public services, civic institutions, and economic structures. It asks what it would take to ensure every citizen has the foundational resources to stay included.
This webinar explores what universal prevention means in theory and practice, how it sits within wider prevention frameworks, and what the West Midlands Combined Authority Homelessness Taskforce is doing to embed these principles across regional strategies and partnerships.
Supported Housing Regulation
The supported housing landscape is changing. The Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act has introduced new requirements around local needs assessments, strategies, and standards for supported exempt accommodation - and recent consultations on national standards, licensing, and the housing benefit link are beginning to shape what this will look like in practice.
Liz Zacharias from Campbell Tickell shares a practical overview of where things stand, what the legislation and consultations tell us so far, what providers and local authorities are doing to prepare, and the key considerations for areas at different stages of readiness.
Camden's Homelessness System Programme
What does it look like when a council, the NHS, voluntary sector partners and people with lived experience of homelessness genuinely design a system together, and what practical tools does that produce?
In this webinar as we hear directly from Camden Council about their Homelessness System Partnership: a cross-sector collaboration established in 2022, bringing together people with lived experience, Camden Council, VCFSE partners, the NHS and specialist services with a shared ambition to do things differently. We explore Camden's whole system approach to making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring and take a closer look at one of its most innovative outputs: the Personal Passport.