MPHASIS FINAL CONFERENCE: 17th SEPTEMBER 2009

The picture shows Eric Marlier (Conference Chair) and Bill Edgar (Lead Co-ordinator).

Delegates representing twenty five countries from across Europe came together in Paris on 17th September 2009 for the Final Conference of the MPHASIS Project. MPHASIS, which stands for Measuring Progress on Homelessness through Advancing and Strengthening Information Systems, is a major EU funded project led by Bill Edgar and Barbara Illsley from the School of Social and Environmental Sciences at the University of Dundee.

The Conference heard the outcomes of the two main strands of the project: research into national approaches to data collection on homelessness, including work carried out in Poland, France, Italy and Bulgaria, and the experiences of national meetings which were held in twenty partner countries over the last eighteen months. A number of the speakers highlighted the positive impact that the project had made. In countries such as Sweden and Ireland, the project has provided momentum to take forward the development and implementation of co-ordinated Homeless Information Strategies, whilst elsewhere in Europe it has brought stakeholders concerned with combating homelessness together, often for the first time, to discuss issues of data collection.

A key aspect of the conference was the Outcome Statement which was presented at the end of the event by the conference chair, Eric Marlier of CEPS/INSTEAD Research Institute in Luxembourg, and agreed by delegates. He stated that a dynamic has been created from Mphasis that needs to be taken forward. There are five areas where progress on measuring and monitoring homelessness and housing exclusion is still needed and which require action to be taken by countries and the EU. These areas include guidance on specific topics, such as the collection of core socio-democratic variables on homelessness and housing exclusion; improved governance through co-operation between national statistical institutes and key ministries as well as concerted action across different policy levels; a formal commitment in the next round of National Strategy Reports to specify the strategy to count and monitor homelessness; further research into subjects such as the use of administration registers and service providers to improve coverage and linkages; and finally continued networking across Europe to build on the process of mutual learning established via MPHASIS. A useful way forward would be for the Commission and Member States to agree on a common framework and guidelines to measure, monitor and report on homelessness and housing exclusion.