LHF Atlas: looking back at year one – and what’s new for 2020
In February 2019 LHF and Homeless Link launched the new look Atlas of Homelessness Services. The Atlas provides a unique overview of the volume and composition of homelessness services in London alongside rough sleeping figures. The focus is on services for people who are at risk of, or have had, experience of rough sleeping. The Atlas will be updated each year in February. Look out for news of the 2020 release coming soon!
Central to the Atlas is the use of Tableau technology to create maps and other interactive visuals so it’s possible to view a lot of data at the same time, and focus on the data that’s most interesting to you. Data includes unique information about accommodation services, outreach teams, housing first, official rough sleeping counts data and CHAIN data; the most robust data about rough sleeping available. For a guide to using the current release see our short film.
The Atlas is designed for use by professionals working in homelessness and related sectors for example in strategy, policy, commissioning and service roles. It can be used to help people identify gaps and needs, review current provision, inform decisions about commissioning, bidding and funding. A survey of users highlighted the range of ways people are using the resource:
- ‘To benchmark our relative size and range of service with others in the sector.’
- ‘Signposting young people to services’
- ‘Finding out which other providers/services are present in areas that we work in or are considering working in.’
In its first 10 months the Atlas:
- has had over 1500 visitors
- featured in the Big Issue and 24housing
- had two datasets updated.
We have been gathering feedback and presenting the Atlas at various forums and events and look forward to incorporating ideas in the 2020 updates to the Atlas. New features will include being able to view gender or age specific services and a new map of specialist health services. We are also looking at ways to further increase the speed of the site.
The Atlas relies on input from local authorities and service providers – we are very grateful for all your input so far. Feedback is always welcome via social media or by getting in touch with the project manager for the Atlas, Becky Rice becky.rice@lhf.org.uk
