Multiple Needs: Service Users’ Perspectives
This report sets out the experience of 21 people with multiple needs of accessing services. Public services respond well to people with single problems, but when people experience several needs at once, services no longer help. The result is lives spiralling into chaos, homelessness and crime. The report, from our Service User Forum, goes on to summarise the common themes raised. It looks at what was helpful, what was unhelpful and what needs to change.
Most of the people we talked to for this report had a difficult start in life and many still experience daily discrimination, hostility or indifference. They are not outside of our society but part of it, living in all our towns and cities. Yet their needs go unrecognised by a system designed to look for one problem at a time. Everyone pays the price for this failure. People go in and out of the criminal justice system or ricochet between acute services without getting effective help, wasting money and lives. But, as the participants in this report tell us, it doesn’t have to be like this. When people do find the right help, they can begin to get their lives on track and go on to contribute to their community.
Together with the Making Every Adult Matter (MEAM) coalition, we are working on and campaigning for a new approach. This has to start with a recognition of the distinct needs of this group. We need a political commitment to change and a concerted effort to bring together the policy and services that transform lives. The people who directly experience these issues have told us clearly what works and what doesn’t. It’s time we began to listen.
