Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:28 pm on 8 January 2019.
Llywydd, the rise in visible street homelessness is surely one of the most shocking and distressing phenomena of our time and is, in the way that the Member suggests, directly connected to the impact of austerity, both in the lives of individuals and families, but also in the public services that seek to support them. Of course we are pleased to be part of those innovative solutions and to have provided money directly to local authorities over this winter to help with rough-sleeping initiatives. The housing first initiative to which I think the Member has referred has been developed in Conwy and Denbigh, is active in Merthyr and Rhondda Cynon Taf, and is now being adopted in Cardiff as well. The approach to rough-sleeping and street homelessness is complex. It's more than accommodation, we know. It involves more than one agency in a successful response. It requires more than one pathway, because people's needs are very different between being a young person or someone who has a dependency on drugs or alcohol, and we know that there is more than one solution that can be brought about to meet that problem. The innovative work that is being done by the voluntary sector, by the housing association sector and by local authorities in Wales I think gives us some heart that, in those really difficult and distressing circumstances, there is more that we can and want to do here in Wales.