Resistance to Data Collection on Homelessness among Warsaw Service Providers – the Role of The Warsaw Council for the Homeless in Fostering Effective Solutions to Homelessness

European Research Conference, Budapest, 17th September 2010UNDERSTANDING HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING EXCLUSION IN THE NEW

EUROPEAN CONTEXT

ENHR

Attitudes to data collection on homelessness in Warsaw, PL

Julia Wygnańska

Polska Strona Bezdomności i Wykluczeniu mieszkaniowym www.bezdomnosc.edu.pl

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EUROPEAN CONTEXTENHR

Plan of the presentation

Backgound on Warsaw (municipality, homelessness, relationship ngo – local government)

Background on national data collection Current status of data collection in Warsaw Recent developments and attitudes of service providers Pilot study on aggregation of data from service users

registers Conclusions



Warsaw - backgroundWarsaw, The capital of Poland: area of 517 km² 1,7mln inhabitants many inhabitants registered for permanent stay in other gminasBudget 2009: overall city income 2,5b € social welfare and health care 188m € = 7,9% of general spendings) homelessness 2m € av. subsidy for one sleeping place 2.42€Almost 13,5k registered ngos – some are national headquarters; 1756 active in overcoming difficult living situations, supportive

activities 50 services for the homeless: nightshelters, shelters, specialist

shelters; soupkitchens, storehouses, medical point and advisory bodies. All run by about 10 ngos (incl. church based organizations).



Homeless population – background Each Monday on avarage 2300 people in homeless

institutions funded by local government (25 of 40) mostly men, 30-50 years old

Uncounted quantity living in public spaces and gardening allotments

no data on numbers, many alcoholics (banned in shelters), occupation – trash collection

Presumed substantial proportion of users migrating from the country

Gap – lack of services for phisically disabled and of poor health (requiring post-hospital care), lack of services for mentally challenged.



Ngos and local gov’t – moods Independent homeless ngos:

Anti-government tradition still persisting in attitudes of many activists (opposing government much easier then cooperating and building partnership)

Working in charitable effort rather then fulfilling duties contracted out by the local government.

Local government: Feeling comfortable with ngos doing all the job Complaining on shortcomings but providing too little

effort and money for effective solutions



Ngos and local gov’t – dialogue structure Local government plenipotentiary for ngos and Annual

Programme of Cooperation with Ngos. Dialogue Forum (since 2003)

Consultative character and competencies Consisting of thematic dialog commissions formed by ngo

representatives and local gov’t representative for the theme Ngo participate on voluntary basis

Homelessness Commission based on Homelessness Council established in 1991

Meetings once a month About 30 frequent participants, average presence per meeting =

20 people. Since January 2010 minutes are taken and published



(ambivalent) Role of the Council ... in effective management of the problem of

homelessness. On one hand it’s long tradition in fostering cooperation

between l.g. and ngos is unique It builds important networks between street level

workers eg. shelter managers, social workers On the other due to bi-sectoral construction of the

Dialog Forum it keeps substantial number of key stakeholders outside eg. local welfare centres, local police, hospital social workers,

Creates the feeling of omnipotent role of ngos in solving homelessness.



National data collection

Regular headcount survey in Pomerania Voivodship Few Rough Sleeper Counts (Cracow, Bialystok) Census 2011 – headcount methodology planned and already tested Ngos promoting definition of a „homeless person” as an agreed and

recommended for national census (abandoned) Project of the National Strategy on Homelessness

promoting measuring homelessness with „Pomeranian methodology”

National data – only administrative on welfare benefits for people in difficult living situation called homelessness and on beneficiaries of national grant programme for ngos.

Some national networks implementing electronic client registers e.g. MONAR, TPBA to track movement of clients within the organization



Data collection in Warsaw Quarterly reports from ngos that have contracts with

local government on point in time stock of their shelters/institutions:

(per shelter) overall number, sex, age, length of homelessness, adress of last registration for permanent stay

gaps/problems: (1) only marginal data (2) only from shelters contracted by local government

Monday reports (email or phone call) number of available/free spaces among overal stock contracted

out by the local government. gaps: (1) shelters with contracts provide more spaces then

contracted by the l.g. (2) there are organizations which provide spaces without any contract with l.g.



Data collection – developments On February 2010 meeting of the Homelessness

Commission municipal officer mentioned that debate on interactive database on users of homeless services should began.

major goal – to track the service use of the clients of multiple shelters e.g. checking the history of using Warsaw services at registration for the service

Polarized attitudes and furious comments on both sides Pilot study for measuring homelessness through

aggregation of data from ngo service users registers major goal - testing methodology major challenges: (1) withdrowing data protected by the Law on

Personal Data Protection (names, dates of birth, addresses for permanent registration); (2) condition of client registers (mostly in paper)



Attitudes to data collection Attitudes revealed during meetings of the Homelessness Commission (based on the

minutes and official statements issued by some participants/ngos): (Negative:)

Ngos exist to support vulnerable people in need and collecting data contradicts that goal as bureaucracy takes time necessary for direct support.

Interavctive data base makes shelters to become storages and inhabitatns to become pricable commodities/products.

Availability of tracing service use in a past by the person asking for support may be easily used as a justification of denying support.

Ngo social workers are able to gain all data they need in direct interview/contact with the client. They do not need to check it up in a data base.

Gathering data is first step to processing it what would for sure break the regulations of the Law on Personal Data Protection.

(Positive:) Data is collected anyway, and in most cases in paper so why not doing it in electronic

version since it saves time. Easy access to relevant software

Not mentioned: Need to verify easily constructed theses regarding Warsaw homeless population (number,

prevalence of homelessness by choice, formal residence other then Warsaw, (mis)using homeless shelters as worker’s hostels) – stakeholders (including local government) believe they know anyway.



Developments Further meetings proved that:

Participants did not understand basic terms regarding data collection (interactive database, internal database, sharing data, revealing data, data protection, Law on Personal Data Protection, etc.)...

Apart from the need to protect their clients ngos felt the need to protect their institutions from possible judgements e.g. „If people see that a person comes back to our shelter many times someone would claim that the shelter is not effective in supporting people out of homelessness”. Data gathering and analysis would not help us at all.

The debate on interactive data base was abandoned however it seems that local government is still considering its establishment as a condition for municipal contracts for homeless services.

Meanwhile members of the Commission were introduced with the idea of aggregation of data from their client record systems.

The pilot study is currently implemented in Wola district of Warsaw by The Unit for Social Innovation and Research – Shipyard. It is founded by the Mazowia Voivodship Office.



Pilot study July – December 2010, budget 7,5k€ (sic!) Participants:

All (but one) services from the district (9) including full range of services present in the town.

Members and no-members of the Council and organizations paid and not paid for by the local gov’t.

Local welfare centre, local social policy department Attitudes: (positive)

All registers made available to researchers including personal identification data

Procedure does not contradict regulations on personal data collection Local government interested in methodology, as well as remaining ngos

providing services for the homeless (negative)

Results may not pay for amount of work required to collect the data



Pilot study – planned results

Creating positive attitudes to data collection on homelessness among Warsaw service providers.

Improving data collection systems used by Warsaw service providers (supporting transition from paper regiters to electronic databases).

Publishing step by step guidebook for service providers. Recommendations for National Strategy on

Homelessness regarding data collection on national level.

Partial description of homeless population in Warsaw.



Conclusions

Data collection based on client registers run by service providers is possible even when initial environment is not supportive:

ngos traditionally opposing local government local government underpaying services low level of understanding of the need for data collection low quality of existing registers rigorous Law on Personal Data Protection low budget domination of headcount mthodology in measuring

homelessness



Futher Analysis

Documents

Resistance to Data Collection on Homelessness among Warsaw Service Providers – the Role of The Warsaw Council for the Homeless in Fostering Effective Solutions to Homelessness