King's College London

Today, King's Legal Clinic, part of The Dickson Poon School of Law, hosted an event to highlight the role of research in the field of homelessness in the present legal context. Convened by Jo Underwood, supervising solicitor and lecturer in the Clinic, the gathering drew attendees from the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, local authorities, housing advice charities (local and national), law centres and legal aid law firms, some barristers' chambers and a few other universities and research centres.

Rachel Blake, the MP for Cities of London and Westminster, gave the opening keynote. Sophie Earnshaw of Shelter spoke about recent strategic litigation in which the charity has been involved and the research this has entailed. Hannah Piggott (Policy Institute) discussed her work on harm reduction in homelessness services in Scotland. Jo Underwood (King's) and James Wright (City St George’s, University of London) spoke about research evidencing the challenges of finding face-to-face help with homelessness applications.

In the second half of the event, Andrew Guise (Department of Population Health Sciences) introduced attendees to the topic of stigma in homelessness. Katherine Brickell (Department of Geography) spoke about two studies on family homelessness (one involving the role of debt, the other focused on neurodivergent children). Finally, Jess Harris (Health and Social Care Workforce Research Unit) reported findings from a study on multiple exclusion homelessness and use of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The event was chaired by Matthew Ahluwalia, barrister, Garden Court Chambers.

• You can access the presentation slides (as PDFs) via the links above.