1994 to 2001

 
In late 1994, GCSH began a programme of regeneration and repositioning, setting aside its service delivery programme and taking up cudgels for people affected by homelessness through building strong and meaningful relationships with voluntary sector service providers and taking up discussion with statutory agencies on a more formal footing. GCSH aimed to become an independent voluntary organisation which works closely and jointly with statutory agencies on behalf of its voluntary sector membership, and aimed to influence policy, practice and provision through joint working and effective collaboration.
 
Emphasising the importance of practitioner input to planning of services and policy development, GCSH set up a wide range of forums and discussion groups on issues agreed by its membership and worked to establish positive relationships with the statutory agencies to allow the information gained from practitioners to be fed into planning discussions. In 1995 GCSH's first annual conference concentrated on hostel reprovisioning, examining the experience of current work on the Duke St (Great Eastern) closure programme and the planned closure of the Glasgow Resettlement Unit.
 
1996 was a year of considerable development, with the organisation becoming involved in the campaign to bring funding to Scotland to tackle rough sleeping, and later in the year working with the Hamish Allan Centre and City Housing and Social Work to set up Glasgow's own Rough Sleeping Initiative. The 1996 conference took the involvement of Health in Homelessness as its theme, launching GCSH's report on homeless people's experience of health care and building on plans for further work between homelessness and health agencies. With homelessness at last becoming a feature in Community Care plans, GCSH also undertook to investigate homeless people's experience of community care.
 
The policy agenda warmed up in the latter half of the decade, with major change plans developing for modernising community care and housing, and rough sleeping at the centre of the Government's agenda. Existing work in GCSH expanded on the themes of health, rough sleeping and community care, and by 1998 the organisation had a track record in coordinating joint working and building capacity in services across the sectors. A monitoring database set up for rough sleeping was developed, and became the tool used across Scotland's RSI funded services. The 1997 conference theme was women and homelessness, and on the request of the homelessness network GCSH set up ongoing work in this area, while the 1998 conference concentrated on developments in Community Care, launching the Obstacles to Care and the Making Connections reports.
 
The monitoring database highlighted the role of the large scale hostels in triggering rough sleeping in Glasgow, and the Glasgow Review Team, involving GCSH's Director and RSI Coordinator alongside City Housing, Health, Social Work and others to examine ways of dealing with Glasgow's street homelessness. The Review Team report set in motion the development of a hostel reprovisioning programme for Glasgow which had a realistic prospect of being funded.
 
1999 saw the new Scottish Parliament set up, and a new emphasis on Social Justice developed. New housing and homelessness policy was trailed in a green paper, and GCSH responded vigorously. GCSH's Director was invited by the Housing Minister to join the Scottish Task Force on Homelessness.
 
Towards the end of the decade, personal development, opportunity, training and employment became recognised as important elements of sustainable resettlement for many people affected by homelessness. The New Futures Fund Initiative was set up through Scottish Enterprise to ensure that some of the most excluded groups could access and actually make use of a programme designed to deliver this. GCSH and its members worked jointly to ensure a big emphasis on homelessness and GCSH set up and coordinates the NF network in Glasgow. The GCSH 1999 conference on tackling homelessness through partnerships emphasised this aspect of work. Supported by Employment Services and Scottish Enterprise, the aim now is to work towards mainstreaming of opportunity and employment for people affected by homelessness.
 
Working to improve access to information and communications technology for people affected by homelessness became a major objective of GCSH at this time, reflecting the growing use of technology and with it the growing danger of exclusion for those unable to access and use it. This was later reflected in the establishment of the Homeless Information Pages, with an interactive website, learning centres within our members venues and a training programme coming on stream.
 
The Supporting People programme offers the possibility of new ways of looking at, developing and providing support to people affected by homelessness, but also brings new risks to support providers and to local authorities. The importance of the right kind of support has been recognised since the early days of GCSH, but the general changes in the population of homeless people mean that the balance of expertise required to provide it has altered considerably. Support is vital in sustaining people through some of the crisis points of homelessness, in building skills and confidence and in longer term sustainable resettlement. GCSH shifted the scope of its health related work to a reflect the holistic understanding of well-being the organisation endorses, and to include support and care. The 2000 conference theme of 'homelessness - from surviving to thriving' aimed to focus thinking in the network on these issues.
 
Influencing practice at a time of change was GCSH's challenge around the turn of the millennium. The identification of what works for people affected by homelessness was the subject of much discussion and debate in all the GCSH forums and also in the multi-agency working groups at local and national level, including the Task Force.