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A NEW CONTRACT has been put out to tender to provide Housing First services in Dublin that is worth over five times that of the original contract in 2014, as part of a long-term plan to keep people out of homelessness.
The Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE) issued a tender yesterday worth €16.4 million for Housing First – which involves the provision of housing and health supports to try to keep people out of homelessness – over the next five years, after the original contract was set up for just under €2.9 million in its first year.
Housing First primarily caters for adults, and has already housed people who would have been seen as the most entrenched, longstanding rough sleepers – those who may have been on the streets for years and completely lost touch with the system.
The latest funding announcement comes just after the latest homeless figures for October 2018 were published, with the number of adults becoming homeless rising by 130 in the space of a month.
There are currently just under 6,000 adults homeless in Ireland. Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy said yesterday that there has been a continuous increase in the number of adults seeking help.
“This underlines the importance of the continued roll out of Housing First, as well as additional supports for single homelessness,” he said.
Supply remains a constant thorn in the side of initiatives like Housing First as the lack of it in the capital is driving the price of rent up, and putting more and more at risk of homelessness.
This programme was the first in Ireland through which homeless people are given a home first of all, with round-the-clock services then provided to them.
Following the successful pilot demonstration project in Dublin a larger project was set up. This project was delivered by Peter McVerry Trust in partnership with Focus Ireland, on behalf of the DRHE and Dublin local authorities. This project ran from late 2014 until summer 2018.
It currently has 170 active tenancies under its remit.
The original budget for the plan was just over €2.9 million a year, but this will increase as the service seeks to more than triple the number of tenancies it provides.
The new budget of over €16 million will seek to achieve the aim of the project which is to provide “immediate, permanent and affordable housing to tackle homelessness, and then provides the appropriate wraparound housing and health supports, and connections to community-based supports, to ensure people maintain their housing and improve their overall health and well-being”.
The contract will seek to heavily increase the number of tenancies being managed under Housing First, with a minimum of 575 tenancies expected within three years.
“The successful tenderer MUST agree to manage all active Housing First tenancies,” it noted, with 120 in the Dublin City Council area and another 50 in the other local authority areas in Dublin.
Creating and managing a minimum of 405 new tenancies is also required, with 70 required in the first year of the contract in Dublin City Council areas alone.
It is important to note that whoever is awarded this contract must source this accommodation – through ownership, leasing arrangements or the private rented sector – with funding outside of the funding issued as part of this tender.
When it has acquired a suitable property, it must offer “intensive, time-unlimited visiting support” to the tenant in the home.
“The team involved MUST be capable of responding to a wide range of high and complex needs,” it said, citing that people may have issues including mental health problems, ongoing drug use, a physical or intellectual disability, or may have been convicted of a crime.
Separately, the DRHE has issued a tender worth €3 million on its outreach service, to engage with adults who experience rough sleeping, to get them into temporary accommodation and explore options available such as Housing First to get them into more secure accommodation.
Both schemes are being funded through Section 10 funding provided by the government, and the HSE.
With reporting from Cormac Fitzgerald
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also , I don’t think it should be called ” bettering ” their exams results , it’s questioning their results to make sure they were graded properly .
Suzie, of course people are appealing to better their result. If they thought that the examiner had been generous to them do you really think they’d appeal in order for the exam to be “graded properly”?
sloop ,yes to better their result because the students believe they did better than the results they were given so therefore appeal , but if it had been graded properly in the first place then they wouldn’t have to appeal .
But its not called bettering?
Agreed Suzie, but, not wishing to sound pedantic, the article is about the results of the appeals not why the students had to appeal. Having said that, the fact that there were so many appeals raises serious questions which need to be answered
so nearly a fifth of results appealed were wrong? that’s quite startling
Over 25% of Biology was upgraded. What a poor marking performance. And let’s not forget those marking Biology were the ones teaching it too…. scary.
25% of appealed results were upgraded, appealed results are not an accurate sample of exam papers, it is in fact a very small percentage of total papers.
25% of Biology was upgraded ? – where are you getting that figure from ? 245 out of 25,596 is not 25%……..
Now if you said 25% of those appealed, that would be different………..
well they don’t generally upgrade non appealed papers now do they. Think about it for a while…. 25% of all appealed Biology papers were upgraded. They are a representation of both the standard of marking a teaching.
I understand that S ReiIIy, but I think some thought should be put into reviewing a broader sample of appealed and unappealed papers to investigate what the actual % is, given that the percentage of appealed is so high.
How can so many results be wrong? Will the teacher that gave these wrong results be marking next year?
Course they will. You can’t punish anyone in this country
Except non public or state and semi state workers. we’re fair game.
2000 wrong out of almost 390,000 is a pretty good result. Don’t forget that for many exams what is right and what is wrong can be a matter of opinion.
1,822 upgraded yet only 3 downgraded, I somehow find it hard to believe that so many were marked mistakenly in one direction only.
There’s always going to be more upgrades as you would generally only appeal a result if you think you should have been marked higher after viewing the script yourself, and often with a teacher. If you thought you were lucky to get what you got surely you’d leave well enough alone and not appeal it?
I never knew there was an exam on One Direction Pat? If there was I’m sure a lot of teenagers scored well on it !!!
Lot of good it does for students who may have missed out on a college place due to erroneously marked papers when the term started 6 weeks ago for most colleges. Shocking number of papers marked incorrectly too it seems.
Is 1 in 200 really “shocking”? Bear in mind that many papers have a lot of wiggle room for answers to be “right” or “wrong”. Take Economics for example, one I got checked. For one question on the advantages of Foreign Direct Investment one could say:
Increases Employment
Increases State Revenue through Taxtion
Decreases Social Welfare Spend
Increases Consumer Spending
Decreases State Healthcare costs.
You could get anywhere between 5 and 30 on that answer, depending on the corrector and marking scheme. Some will come along and consider them all separate valid points, another could say that they are all spins on the same answer.
@David Hanlon. I agree that the results have come out too late. However, if you look you will see that the highest number of exams that were marked wrongly apply to Ag Science and that was 1.8%. The total on average is 0.47%. That means that 99.53% of all papers were deemed to have been marked correctly. These figures refer to the overall number of exams corrected and not to the appeals.
6 weeks is far too long to have to wait for the appeal results.
All college places have to be postponed till next year now.
It’s very important for students waiting for appeals to accept a relevant course this year so that it might count for the original course they wanted eg taking science while your hoping for medicine
Them percentages are all wrong
Did my leaving this year and failed business was shocked when I seen this so decided to view my papers , when I seen I got 38% I walked out of the room, it was the most frustrating thing ever since I did 9 months of grinds for 6th year luckily enough I got a course I’m enjoying but 2% off a pass is horrible to see
what about the junior cert appeals when can we get the statistics on those?!
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