During this quarter 358 households were prevented from becoming homeless for a minimum of 6 months.

Interventions

The main successful prevention interventions are shown below, click on the text to download graphs which show the different LA's work with each of the interventions.

Private rented sector: 177 households were prevented from becoming homeless for at least 6 months by using the private rented sector (this includes deposit/rent in advance schemes)

Social housing: 48 households were prevented from becoming homeless for at least 6 months by allocating social housing.

Negotiations: 34 households were prevented from becoming homeless for at least 6 months by using some form of negotiation (this includes negotiations with landlords, mediation and home visits) and

Debt/arrears: 23 households were prevented from becoming homeless for a t least 6 months by providing some form of financial advice and assistance (this includes work with housing benefit departments, and work to reduce rent arrears)

Reasons

There were a range of reasons why households needed help to prevent homelessness. The main reasons are summarised in this graph.

Support Needs

Where the support needs of households were recorded the main support need, as perceived by the Local Authority officer, was mental health (27 households), followed by general life skills (20 households), debt issues (16 households).

Age

The following graph shows the age of the principle household members. For 167 of the cases where homelessness was prevented the age of the household was not recorded. Of the LA's that recorded this information it can be seen that the most homelessness preventions were carried out for the age groups 31-40 followed by 22-25.

Children

Many of the households whose homelessness was prevented had children. The following graph shows the number of households that had  one or  more children.

Gender

The following graph shows the male/female split of the all the preventions carried out in Devon during October and December 2006.

Raw Data

The raw data spreadsheet can be downloaded here. The spreadsheet contains further information on the age, gender, and family make up of the households whose homelessness was prevented in Devon.