The By-Name List

“For me, the By-Name List is about having the whole picture of a person, rather than a piece of the puzzle. This helps overcome the chaos of many people knowing only elements of my story. When I think of my time on the streets, I am reminded of how disjointed this lack of coordination can feel and how much more difficult it is to get help when services don’t have all the information.” (Rocky)

A BNL Guide has been co-developed with an advisory group comprised of people with lived experience and front-line workers. You can access a copy of this BNL Guide here.

The By-Name List facilitates the provision of coordinated care and support to those experiencing homelessness.

Subject to the consent of the person sleeping rough, the By-Name List captures key information related to that person. Information collected in the By-Name List falls into four categories:

  • Biographical information — basic demographic information, location, vulnerability indicators, reasons for homelessness and engagement tips and risks. 

  • Housing needs — current housing status, housing goal, how the person is navigating the social housing application process and their history of housing and homelessness.

  • Support needs — details of the supports a person requires and the support network in place to address these needs. 

  • Health needs — restricted details for use by clinicians including shared care plans, diagnoses and discharge summaries. 

This information is updated whenever changes occur and provides a map of the person’s journey through the system and tracks whether outcomes are being delivered.  Access to this information facilitates speedier and more effective decision-making by participating organisations by allowing on-the-spot understanding of:

  • A person’s history of homelessness;

  • Their care and engagement preferences;

  • The current barriers preventing stable, permanent accommodation; and 

  • Who is or was in their care network to meet their housing and support needs.

Until the By-Name List became available, there was no systematic way for service providers to share information about individuals experiencing homelessness, nor to collect and collate information about a person’s journey before, during and after homelessness. 

This included, for example, not collecting accurate information about how long a person had been homeless, whether a person was receiving the support they needed, the sustainability of any housing outcomes, and deaths and sickness among those experiencing homelessness.

This lack of shared information acted as a block to the provision of coordinated and holistic care and support to individuals. The By-Name List provides key information on the person experiencing homelessness in real time and facilitates the sharing of this information across different organisations, time periods and geographic locations.

The By-Name List also helps place-based efforts by providing communities with decision-making insights to better understand what homelessness looks like in their area, and how they can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their service network.

This facilitates the development of new insights of what homelessness looks like at a person, place and systems level, helping everyone involved to make evidence-informed decisions. It can help identify systems barriers, areas of high impact and other patterns that can inform policy, practice and resource decisions.

The information on the BNL can be thought of as providing the voice of lived experience at scale!