• NYHS home
• Strategy and partnerships

Strategy and partnerships

Successful work with individual young people and their families to prevent homelessness and to promote a sustainable transition to adulthood draws on a wide network of disciplines, services, funding streams and sectors. Unless a local structure of effective communication, joint working and strategic target-setting is in place - and senior local policy-makers, commissioners and strategists are committed to it - services from the young person's perspective (where they are visible at all) are likely to appear disconnected from each other and from their own concerns.

Critical to successful working are partnerships at strategic and frontline levels between

• local authority Housing Options teams, Children's Services, Supporting People commissioners and Benefits teams;
• practitioners and commissioners from Health and Justice agencies;
• public sector agencies, housing associations and voluntary organisations;
• service commissioners, providers and users (young people and their families).

It is rare to find formal or informal networks which are equally inclusive of all: illustrated in this knowledge base are partnerships where some of the above are effectively engaged, together with suggestions for strengthening and expanding local networks to provide a more accessible and holistic prevention and support service.

In this section

• Being strategic