Duty to Assist

Duty to Assist is a human rights approach to homelessness prevention that involves a legal duty for local authorities to make reasonable efforts to end a person’s homelessness or to stabilize their housing. Based on legislation and practice originating in Wales, Duty to Assist can be used to move us closer to preventing and ending homelessness by creating a positive obligation for governments and communities to respect the right to housing. Currently, there are no practical mechanisms to seek redress if that right is violated (or soon will be).

WATCH: In this Prevention Matters! panel session, we learned about Duty to Assist and how it's been implemented in Wales.

Preventing homelessness requires that people be assured of a process to gain immediate access to housing and supports to remedy the risk or experience of homelessness. In practical terms, this means that higher levels of government provide a policy and funding framework for homelessness prevention and provide communities with the necessary resources and supports to enable them to fulfill the requirement of providing information, advice, and assistance to those experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

As a rights-based approach to homelessness, Duty to Assist is legally enforceable, providing the opportunity for legal recourse. It identifies jurisdictional responsibilities between different orders of government in order to ensure that anyone who is referred for assistance (including through self-referral) is provided with appropriate supports to remain housed or quickly become rehoused.

This statutory duty is not met by referring people to an emergency shelter or other homelessness service that does not proactively prevent their homelessness or help them exist homelessness rapidly and in a sustained way.

An International Example: Wales

The concept of Duty to Assist has been put in practice in Europe with the Housing (Wales) Act of 2014, which articulated a comprehensive and rights-based approach to homelessness prevention. Central to this legislation is a requirement that local authorities (municipal governments) provide information, advice, assistance, and navigation supports to people seeking help, and a “duty to help to prevent an applicant from becoming homeless” (section 66) if a person or family is: a) threatened with homelessness, and b) eligible for help. In addition to ensuring that there are funded early intervention programs in place, this strategy stresses a systems-based approach to collaboration.

A preliminary evaluation of the impact of the Welsh legislation has demonstrated positive results in that services have been “successfully reoriented towards prevention, creating a more supportive environment, reducing the number of people in temporary accommodation and decreasing the number who remain homeless after seeking help.”

Application in Canada

How can Canadian governments effectively use legislation and a systems approach to prevent homelessness? By establishing a statutory duty to assist.

Duty to Assist legislation makes homelessness prevention a statutory responsibility with defined roles for all orders of government. The federal government would be responsible for defining and enforcing the right to housing and creating a funding framework. The provincial and territorial governments would be responsible for passing and enforcing Duty to Assist legislation and imposing it on municipalities. Municipal governments would, in turn, work with the local homelessness sector to coordinate and deliver Duty to Assist.

Although the long-term goal would be to support all people at risk of or experiencing homelessness, there is an argument to be made for a structured, phased approach to implementation, beginning with a focus on youth homelessness. There is momentum around preventing youth homelessness in Canada, and there are complexities for this population that don’t exist for adults. As well, if we want to tackle chronic homelessness among adults, there is a compelling case for focusing on youth homelessness.

What Would a Duty to Assist Include?

• Rights-based approach: The rights protected under a Duty to Assist are not only human rights, but legal rights.
• Obligation to act: Upon presentation to the organization that is locally coordinating the duty to assist, state actors are obliged to act within 14 days to provide assistance in the form of not just information, but the offer of housing-led support.
• Reconciling different duties to assist: Different mainstream services may have similar duties to report or assist, including health, justice, and child protection. A homelessness prevention policy based on Duty to Assist should not be confused with similar directives outlined in child protection, for instance. As such, Duty to Assist policy and practice should clarify the circumstances under which reporting and assistance involves child protection or other systems, programs, and services,
• Addressing the needs of Indigenous youths: In alignment with the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, all Duty to Assist efforts must strive to be equitably applied to Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth, without service disparities. Indigenous youth should be able to obtain culturally appropriate, Indigenous-led housing and supports. Assistance must be based on a respect for traditional knowledge, cultural traditions and practices, and account for the impact of colonialism on Indigenous communities, including intergenerational trauma.
• Quality assurance: Duty to Assist legislation must be backed up by measures to ensure full access to support, quality services, opportunities for client feedback and input, and a demonstration of impact. This includes clarity regarding a determination of when the Duty to Assist has been met.
• Housing-led supports: Assistance should always be housing-led. In other words, referring a young person to an emergency shelter or other homelessness service that offers minimal supports to rehouse the young person will not count as having provided assistance or completion of a duty to assist, if it does not end the person’s homelessness or stabilize their housing.
• Client-centred supports: The supports offered to young people through Duty to Assist must be client-centred, meaning the choice of young people as to whether they want help and what supports they need is respected.
• Unconditional support: The offer of assistance cannot come with conditions such as abstinence, engagement in education or employment, or participation in programming.
• Equitable provision: There must be a commitment to the equitable provision of this duty to assist, with efforts to ensure barriers to benefitting from this legislation are minimized as much as possible. This can be done through broad structural and systems prevention efforts (e.g., amendments to sex trafficking laws, equitable systems funding on First Nations reserves), and through accountability mechanisms established throughout the system of care.
• Emphasis on place-based supports: There is a need to ensure that as much as possible, supports are place-based and that people are not forced to leave their communities to receive services due to lack of available supports.

How Duty to Assist Works on a Community Level

With a legal responsibility for a Duty to Assist defined, and an investment in preparing communities to have systems and supports in place to enable implementation, an important question to ask is: how this would work at the community level? What happens between the point where the need for help is identified, and actual supports are delivered?

1. Identification: People either self-refer (seek assistance themselves) or are referred by another service (or, in the case of youths, by an adult who is aware the young person needs assistance).
2. Connection, a place to access support: A Duty to Assist will have no impact if those who make the determination that a young person is at risk have no place to refer to for assistance. A visible, accessible overarching system needs to be in place to handle referrals, triage, and ensure people get the supports and housing they need. This system will involve coordinated entry and case management to take reasonable steps to remedy the situation in a timely manner.
3. System of care to provide supports: A well-functioning community response to homelessness requires a system of care. This is an approach to systems integration that is client-centred and ensures that people get access to the services and systems they need in a timely and appropriate way. A system of care ideally needs to be in place to implement a Duty to Assist.
4. Range of supports and services: For Duty to Assist to work, there must be in place a range of prevention-focused early intervention programs and systems of support. In addition, the key components of the system of care described above are essential for early intervention prevention strategies to be effective. These include shelter diversion programs, housing-led supports, and school-based early interventions. The range of supports should also include housing stabilization, options for transitional and supportive housing, and independent living, and there should also be services geared towards health and well-being, education and employment, and social inclusion.

To learn more about Duty to Assist, see our free online training available on the Homelessness Learning Hub. This article was adapted from Duty to Assist—A Human Rights Approach to Youth Homelessness.