Rough Sleeping and Complex Needs: A Process Evaluation

Project Director: Stephen Green
Project Duration: 2018-2019

This process evaluation aims to provide evidence on different approaches taken to working with people who are sleeping rough who have mental health and substance misuse needs. By examining two key public funded initiatives – Rough Sleeping Grant and the Rough Sleeping Social Impact Bond – it will identify the lessons learned in designing, setting up and delivering services to those who have been sleeping rough and experience mental health and substance misuse issues. Specific objectives are:

• To understand what the different projects working with this service user group are delivering, considering the needs of the service users, any multi-agency partnerships and any constraints in the local context.
• To understand the influence of the funding mechanism on design, set up and delivery.
• To identify the process factors that stakeholders identify as working well across the design, set up and delivery of the interventions, where the challenges lie, and how these have been or may be addressed.
• Where services are near to the end of their funding period, explore any plans for sustaining the intervention in original or redesigned form and the reasons behind this. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, the evaluation considers approaches being taken by 12 projects in the programme, selected by MHCLG as specifically designed to respond to the complex needs of people who have slept rough.

The project team also includes Professor Sarah Johnsen (Heriot-Watt University) and Dr Peter Mackie (Cardiff University).