Quality tended to be ignored when providing services to the homeless, the director of the Homeless Initiative has said.
Ms Mary Higgins, speaking at the launch of a handbook on good practice in service provision to the homeless last night, said there had been a tendency to concentrate on the supply, "with little attention paid to the quality of those services or whether or not they actually meet the needs of people using them".
This had resulted in an oversupply of some services and no services at all for some sectors of the homeless population, she said.
"There are a lot of shelters for older men," she said before the launch of Putting People First - A Good Practice Handbook For Homeless Services, "and nothing for younger men."
"There is very little emergency accommodation for women or couples."
She also said there were many food provision centres but no activities for homeless people during the day.
She suggested that there should be more advice and training centres.
The handbook, which will be supplied to everyone working with the homeless, is intended as a tool to develop and improve services.
It has been developed in conjunction with homeless service providers and is divided under six service headings, including "Hostels and Emergency Accommodation", "Street Outreach", "Food Centres" and "Settlement".
It says: "People who are homeless or marginalised are not a homogenous group - they are all different with different needs, expectations and hopes.
"Services therefore need to provide choice for the service user from a range of options," the handbook continues.
It sets out a vision, purpose and range of quality standards under each service heading.
Ms Higgins said the handbook was "going to be an extremely useful tool. There is a lot of talk about quality, but until now, there has been no reference point for quality."