Innovative services for the homeless

Abstract

This chapter considers the nature of innovation in services for the homeless as a preliminary to discussion of the developments occurring in the provision of services across Europe. It begins with a consideration of the meaning of innovation with reference to the issues discussed in Chapter 2. An examination of changes in the nature and type of services for homeless people reflects changing policy perceptions of the nature of homelessness itself and this issue is briefly considered. The discussion then moves on to the identification of recent forms of innovation, which may be associated with the emergence of the social model of homelessness, and to an examination of the nature of institutional innovation within the context of the structure-agency model. This analysis is then used to develop a conceptual framework of innovation which is used in Chapters 5, 6 and 7 to examine the nature of innovative services for homelessness in Europe. In Chapter 2 we argued that change and innovation in the delivery of services to the homeless can be classified as ‘endogenous’ and ‘exogenous’; the former reflecting a learning and adaptive process resulting from the ‘normal’ operation of the systems of service delivery, the latter reflecting more radical changes and innovations resulting from external pressures, in this case fundamental transformations in the social, demographic and economic structures of European society. Innovation, whether endogenous or exogenous, is the product of a ‘structuring process’ in which proactive agents (including policy makers, social workers and housing managers) working within the context of constraining and permissive structures (traditions, rules and bureaucratic and institutional forms) inherited from the past, make strategic, organisational and operational decisions and choices about the delivery of services.