Losing and Finding a Home

What is multiple exclusion?

Multiple exclusion is a term that has progressed from another term that has been used for a number of years now known as ‘social exclusion’.

Social exclusion, defined by the Government, is “a shorthand label for what can happen when individuals or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown”.

The importance of defining terms like this is that it helps to define what kinds of problems people might be having and how the Government will decide what it is that they will try and do about it.

What typically happens in the UK though is that service delivery is fragmented. This means that a mental health agency will only try to deal with a person’s mental health problem, a drug agency will only deal with their drug problem, and a housing agency will only deal with housing problems. But from the service user’s perspective these problems may be all linked together and need to be dealt with together. They do not want to have to go to different people to get help with each type of problem.

Now some people are arguing that the term ‘multiple exclusion’ needs to be recognised in the Government’s policies as this will better shape how those services will be able to help the people that need them.

A person experiencing multiple exclusions is said to be meeting the following three criteria:

• They will have a combination of issues which will impact adversely on their lives (for example, poor housing or homelessness, substance misuse, physical disability, low level skills, behavioural difficulties and so on)
• They will be routinely excluded from the services that they need (possibly because they do not meet the threshold for support, or because different services disagree about who should take responsibility for them)
• They lead a chaotic life (because they are excluded from services that should be there to help, and/or they make inappropriate use of emergency services and the criminal justice system)

Multiple exclusion is a new term and so it remains to be seen what impact it will have on the Government’s policies and following that, on the services that are provided to those people who need them. What it does do though, is recognise that the services whose job it is to help people will know more about the whole range of problems that some people may be having, and will be able to work better with the other services to make sure that their clients get everything that they need.