www.policyschool.ca PUBLICATIONS PUBLICATIONS SPP Research Paper SPP Research Paper Volume 12:1 January 2019 http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/sppp.v12i0.43279 BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER: INTEGRATING SERVICES TO ADDRESS HOMELESSNESS Alina Turner and Diana Krecsy SUMMARY In Canada, approximately $27 billion is spent annually to fund services that deal with homelessness, including the related issues of poverty, mental illness, addiction, domestic violence, poor health and childhood trauma. Another $6.5 billion annually is spent on social assistance programs, health care, and the police and justice systems when their roles intersect with homelessness. Thus, $33.5 billion is spent each year on an array of 167,000 fragmented services provided by both government and non- proft organizations across the country. Ontario alone has some 60,000 social and community services in operation, while Alberta has 20,000. There must be a better, more cost-efective way to achieve results through co-ordinating this confusing jumble of services. Integrating services for cost-efectiveness and streamlining to clients must be done properly or it risks simply adding more layers of bureaucracy. When considering how best to integrate and consolidate services, the focus must remain on the clients and not on the systems involved. Nor does integration necessarily equate to more positive outcomes. Integration should not be considered a cure-all for what ails the system; rather, it would be more realistic to take a transformative and deliberate approach to collaboration and change. This paper examines methods and proposes tenets by which services can be integrated, yet still deliver efcient and efective assistance to homeless Canadians. Moving towards integration entails examination of the primary objective, the systems involved, the target population of clients, development of an integration strategy and activities, a timeline, a list of participant organizations, regional scope and client impact, to name a few of the variables. The idea is to develop mechanisms to share, link and leverage the various stakeholders’ realms more strategically. The work requires co-operation and co-ordination among organizations that may have diferent commitments and thinking, with the aim of creating mutual trust and efective relationships. The best way to think about integration is to picture a network and nodes of activity, interests, people and resources as being parts of all the systems that provide services to the homeless. The key then is to focus on which nodes ofer clients the best outcomes. These nodes include social services, education, justice, housing, health, children’s services and income supports.