Accommodation for People Leaving Cardiff Prison

Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:18 pm on 13 February 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:18, 13 February 2019

Yes, well, again, I largely agree with the Member—we certainly do need to improve some of the services. There is a particular concern around the perception around the Huggard centre in particular and we have just actually provided them with funding to improve both security and storage facilities at the Huggard, because the Member will know the detail—people are afraid that their possessions will be stolen while they sleep, and they don't feel the security arrangements are sufficient and so on. So, there is a perception issue as well, because I think—[Interruption.] Yes. Obviously, I personally wouldn't want to go to sleep with all my possessions on the bed in front of me and not know that—you know, somebody who just walks past could help themselves. Clearly, locker systems and so on are essential to anybody for basic human privacy and decency. So, we have provided additional funding to the Huggard centre for that, and we know that night shelters can be daunting and not the right option for large numbers of people. They are the right option for some—they have been very helpful for some people for a pathway out of homelessness. But the Member will know that we've been looking very carefully at funding and increasing trauma-centred pathways and the housing first type options for people so that we get people back into decent, secure accommodation as a first step, rather than having to climb a reward ladder, where you get yourself off the street and then you're rewarded with something else and so on, which has been an approach in the past. I think quite a lot of the thinking—. I've been in this post a very short time, but a lot of the thinking seems to have turned, quite rightly so, to learning from the lived experiences of people who've experienced homelessness about what would have worked for them and why it took them so long to get back to having a decent, secure home. And we are very keen on pursuing that.

Going back, though, specifically to prisoners, it isn't all devolved, but some of it is devolved, and what we're looking to do is to make sure that our local authorities that do have prison populations likely to be discharged into them can work closely with the prison to get a better information system going, so that the person who's coming out of prison will understand what's available for them and the local authority will expect them, because that's a big issue as well, because if they're all released on a Friday afternoon at 5.30 p.m., that's clearly going to be problematic and that clearly has been an issue at Cardiff prison, and I know from my own constituency work that it's an issue at Swansea prison as well. So, we are working very hard to make sure that those systems work better.