London Housing Advice Strategy

The GLA wished to produce a Housing Advice Strategy to ensure that timely, high quality housing advice and assistance would be accessible to all people in housing need and to help them resolve their housing problems well before the situation reaches crisis point and people become homeless.

To ensure that people from ethnic minority backgrounds have access to high-quality housing advice and assistance – which is crucial given that they are almost three times more likely to become homeless than White people - the GLA asked ETHNOS to consult BME voluntary and community organisations on their views of the draft London Housing Advice Strategy.

The aims of the consultation were:

• to assess the views of the BME sector on the draft Housing Advice Strategy
• to get a better understanding of how to engage the BME sector in the development and delivery of high-quality housing advice services
• to test the feasibility of carrying out action research and/or capacity-building work with these organisations in the future, with a particular focus on preventing homelessness amongst BME communities

The final report informed the GLA’s London Housing Advice Strategy and ensured that it covered issues of relevance to ethnic minority households who are in housing needs, homeless or at risk of homelessness.

GREATER LONDON AUTHORITY

Equality Impact Assessment on the London Housing Strategy

• Final report

Housing in London is a critical issue. The London Housing Board tasked the Greater London Authority with carrying out an Equality Impact Assessment on the draft London Housing Strategy – the document which sets out the future of housing for the whole of London for the next decade. Because of the importance of housing and of the number of people it affects, it was crucial to get things right. So the GLA commissioned ETHNOS to find out about the anticipated impact of the Strategy on the following target equality groups: people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, Gypsies and Travellers, asylum seekers and refugees, people from different faith groups, disabled people, women, children and young people, older people, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people.

We combined a tailor-made EQIA questionnaire and focus groups with experts on both housing and the specific communities targeted. The results from the EQIA have fundamentally shaped the future of housing in London.

London Housing Advice Strategy

The GLA wished to produce a Housing Advice Strategy to ensure that timely, high-quality housing advice and assistance would be accessible to all people in housing need and to help them resolve their housing problems well before the situation reaches crisis point and people become homeless.
To ensure that people from ethnic minority backgrounds have access to high-quality housing advice and assistance – which is crucial given that they are almost three times more likely to become homeless than White people - the GLA asked ETHNOS to consult minority ethnic voluntary and community organisations on their views of the draft London Housing Advice Strategy. The aims of the consultation were:

• to assess the views of the black and minorityt ethnic sector on the Housing Advice Strategy
• to get a better understanding of how to engage the black and minority ethnic sector in the development and delivery of high-quality housing advice services
• to test the feasibility of carrying out action research and/or capacity-building work with these organisations in the future, with a particular focus on preventing homelessness amongst black and minority ethnic communities

The final report informed the GLA’s London Housing Advice Strategy and ensured that it covered issues of relevance to ethnic minority households who are in housing needs, homeless or at risk of homelessness.

London Children’s Strategy

The Mayor of London produced a Children’s Strategy to promote the best interests of the capital’s children and to give them a voice on the issues of relevance to them. A major consultation exercise was organised to assess children’s views about the Draft Strategy. As part of the consultation, ETHNOS consulted with “hard-to-reach” children: refugee and asylum-seeking children, homeless children and children at risk of offending.

We carried out the research with children and young people aged between 10 and 17 years. Our first task was to transfer the draft Strategy into something that was meaningful for children, to which they could relate and on which they could comment.

The children were asked to discuss, in their own words and in relation to their own experiences, issues related to the nine strategic areas identified in the Draft Children’s Strategy. They also completed a simple and fun questionnaire covering the main issues addressed in the Strategy.

Throughout the project, we ensured that the tasks were meaningful for the children, manageable for their age, and that the atmosphere was friendly and open. Only then could we elicit valid and rich information. Key recommendations were made and the final Strategy was revised in light of the findings.