Ұлыбританияда көшпелі тұрғындарға көмек бағдарламасының эволюциясы

The Rough Sleepers Initiative was an initiative by the Government of the United Kingdom's Rough Sleepers Unit (RSU), which resulted from a campaign by St Mungo's, a London homelessness charity, called National Sleep Out Week. It was designed to accommodate homeless people with emergency hostels.

The RSU was reshaped in 2002 to become the Homelessness Directorate which, in turn, was later subsumed within the Department for Communities and Local Government. The new direction from 2002 on centred on the following priorities:

Continuing to work towards a reduction in rough sleeping but to give the lead role in achieving this to local authorities across the country, including devolving to them the funding of rough sleepers’ services. Each local authority was expected to develop a Homelessness Strategy, including plans for the further reduction in rough sleeping and areas with high numbers of rough sleepers were required to undertake, and report on, annual street counts. Central government gave greater priority and resources to reducing anti social behaviour and the former homelessness tsar, Louise Casey was given a new role in this area as head of the Government's Respect Task Force. Emphasis was placed on preventative services, particularly with the development of a new housing related funding stream called ‘Supporting People’ which offered more opportunities to support vulnerable people in their flats in the community and so prevent the loss of accommodation and homelessness. Street outreach teams working with rough sleepers were also urged to prioritise preventative approaches and to consider a range of possibilities, including helping people return home, rather than referring to a hostel bed as a first option.

Considerable progress has been made in reducing rough sleeping in England with the voluntary sector playing a lead role. Some parts of the voluntary sector have chosen to remain outside the collaborative framework that has been created to achieve the reduction. London continues to have the biggest rough sleeping problem with between 250 and 300 individuals sleeping out on any night and almost 3,000 over a year. Nonetheless, this figure compares favourably with rough sleeping figures for other European capitals and is considerably lower than, for example, New York which has a comparable population to London. In the last year England has experienced a 9% rise in rough sleeping and there is renewed interest in reducing numbers of rough sleepers on the streets of London following the selection of London as host city for the 2012 Olympics. Data published by London's Poverty Profile – a joint project of New Policy Institute and Trust for London – shows the number of rough sleepers found by outreach teams has more than doubled between 2007 and 2012/13 to around 6,400.