About Us

The Scottish Council for Single Homeless (SCSH) is the national membership body in Scotland for organisations and individuals tackling homelessness. Our members include voluntary sector providers, housing associations, local authorities (LAs), academics and other professionals involved in homelessness prevention and alleviation.

We have been in existence for thirty years. During that period SCSH has evolved from a volunteer based organisation focused on ending the provision of traditional nightshelters to a professional staffed membership organisation – part of the ‘second tier’ of voluntary sector bodies. Historically, SCSH has focussed on single people but now seeks to cover all issues relating to homelessness in Scotland.

Scottish Executive statistics show homelessness rose sharply during the late eighties and nineties. SCSH exists to highlight the needs of homeless people and offer practical ideas and information to tackle homelessness. To do this, we work closely with our membership which includes local authorities, voluntary organisations, housing associations, health bodies, academics and individuals.

Sharing the knowledge and experience of our members is a key role for SCSH. We seek to disseminate relevant information quickly and effectively through our monthly newsletter and our website. Our events programme ranges from our highly successful National Homelessness Conference which attracts over 200 delegates each year to smaller information meetings, briefings and consultations covering a wide variety of topics.

As well as providing information and training, we seeks to influence both policy makers (at national and local level) and service providers by :

• Offering support to those implementing homelessness services and other services relevant to homeless people.
• Providing an information source for policy makers and other interest groups
• Acting as a vehicle to ensure the experience of front line services providers and service users is conveyed to policy makers and to allow service providers to share experience with each other

The support of our members is vital to SCSH. Financially, we rely on membership fees to maintain many aspects of our work. Equally importantly, our members provide the evidence and information we need to argue for sustainable solutions to homelessness in Scotland.

What we do

• Work with our members to prevent and tackle homelessness.
• Provide a voice for service providers to policy makers.
• Lobby Holyrood and Westminster for improvements in policy and law.
• Promote good policy and practice in local authorities and housing providers.
• Carry out and disseminate research.
• Provide regular good quality information of topical interest to our members.
• Provide training and seminars.
• Organise the annual Scottish National Homelessness Conference.
• Raise the profile of youth housing issues through our Youth Unit
• Support the development of of leaving home and housing education in schools, youth work and housing support settings.
• Carry out specific commissioned pieces of work on homelessness for our members.

We have participated in the Homelessness Task Force/ Homelessness Monitoring Group, Rough Sleepers Initiative, Health and Homelessness Steering Group, Supporting People Stakeholders Group and a range of other steering and consultative groups. Our members inform the views we take to all of these bodies.

How are we funded?

SCSH receives an annual membership fee from all its members. We also attract annual grant funding towards our costs from the Scottish Executive and local authorities. Funding for projects, research and other work has been raised from a range of other sources including the Community Fund and Communities Scotland. We are also grateful for sponsorship that we have received to help fund our activities.