Homelessness in Luton - How funding silos end up costing more and doing less

Today I met NOAH Enterprise in Luton - great, great, great.

 NOAH work with homeless people in a number of ways: they arrange housing;  feed people; run a drop in medical centre; counsel and support people, run a social enterprise employing homeless people;  run shops selling furniture and provide services to local authorities fitting out social housing with value for money furniture.

NOAH work with people where they are - and move them towards a future that is more sustainable.  Many find work - many start living in settled accommodation - some stop drinking at a level that is harmful.

We started a conversation around the statutory services that NOAH's clients are accessing and the combined cost. One person they worked with accessed emergency health care on almost a weekly basis because he wasn't accessing GP services and was regularly in contact with the criminal justice system (it costs the state an average of £68,000 for someone to be convicted of an offence - any offence). And this is before the cost of benefits is factored in.

NOAH worked to arrange access to a GP and control the medical condition - so no more trips to A&E. A more settled lifestyle and a routine meant that he stopped coming into contact with the police. And at a point that is right, he may find work and move off benefits.

The savings, then are potentially huge for a range of agencies - Police, DWP, PCT. But invariably the funding comes from only one place - a local authority, or DWP. And when the funding goes, all to often the project ends (although not in the case of NOAH which is doing well).

So a 'saving' for one agency becomes a cost for another - for the PCT, as the person starts once again to use A&E services instead of managing a medical condition, or the police as low level crime and chaos takes over once again.

How, in Luton, do we work to bring together all stakeholders to address this? What are the most pressing problems? And what is the true cost of this to all agencies? How to we engage all of these agencies? What is the role of community groups - how can they help?

And what is the process by which we can break down the funding silos and make sure that the resources we have are directed at the whole problem,  not just a part of it?