Six projects make it to shortlist for prestigious 2022 awards
Six projects from across London have been shortlisted for the London Homelessness Awards and are in the running to win a share of the prize fund of £60000.
This is the 22nd year of the awards, which are sponsored by the London Housing Foundation, London Housing Directors, Mayor of London, Crisis and Shelter.
Organisers received over 30 applications for the awards and a judging panel had to choose just six. The projects will now be visited by a member of the panel and the final winner and runners up who will share a prize fund of £60000 will be announced at a special event on October 12th at the Union Chapel in Islington.
Simon Dow is the Chair of the judging panel for the London Homelessness Awards. He said:
“Despite the difficulties of maintaining services alongside Covid restrictions we had over 30 projects apply for this year’s awards. As ever it was extremely difficult for the judges to agree on a final six. But we have an excellent mix of housing associations, local authorities and charities in this year’s finalists. These projects are clear evidence of the sector’s enduring commitment to finding new ways to reduce homelessness in London.”
The six shortlisted projects (in alphabetical order) are:
- Camden CAPP: The Camden Adult Pathway Partnership (CAPP) multi-disciplinary team is, delivered by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) and jointly funded by LB Camden and North Central London Clinical Commissioning Group (NCL CCG). It provides outreach nurse led physical health interventions to vulnerable single homeless people living across 15 supported housing services in Camden. CAPP consists of a Clinical Co-ordinator and two nurses who provide health services to residents, including health needs assessments, vital signs, blood tests, referrals to other providers, and support with navigating the health sector.
- Greenwich Winter Night Shelter: Greenwich Winter Night Shelter is a local charity which provides emergency accommodation and support for the homeless in Greenwich. Last
year, they moved away from the traditional rotating night shelter to set up a static venue. With support from over 200 volunteers, GWNS now provides single-room accommodation for 9 individuals (including a women’s only wing), 1:1 casework and advocacy, and a pet friendly drop-in day centre where anyone who is homeless or vulnerably housed can ac-cess support and facilities. All services have been designed by guests through focus groups to work towards breaking the cycle of homelessness. - Pathway: Since April 2021 five London hospitals (St Georges, Croydon, St Mary’s/Imperial, the Homerton and Ealing/Northwick Park) have introduced Pathway’s model of care for homeless patients and have signed up to Pathway’s Partnership support programme. The model is based on work pioneered at UCLH in 2009. In return for an annual fee, each team receives support and training from Pathway’s core staff, access to our on-line service man-ual and specialist support networks.
- Providence Row: The Outreach Psychotherapy Team provides a reflective, psychothera-peutic service to clients experiencing homelessness. The service has been available to cli-ents in Tower Hamlets since 2018 and expanded into the City of London in 2021. Verified rough sleepers benefit from highly specialised therapists providing psychotherapy inter-ventions in a unique and innovative way e.g. in their preferred environment, on their terms. The service works with clients who are in the most need of therapy but who are least likely to attend a traditional psychotherapy service.
- Riverside: Street Buddies is the first peer-led outreach team in the UK where trained ‘Bud-dies’ and volunteers, who themselves have experienced homelessness, locate and work with rough sleepers across London. The team support people who have often led compli-cated lives and spent years living on the streets by providing a lived-experience befriending service. Our aim is to help rough sleepers build social capital by supporting them to engage with services, develop personal skills and social networks, maximise their income, partici-pate in society through sustainable volunteering or work, and move into settled accom-modation. They aim to bridge the gap left behind by traditional outreach services.
- Thames Reach: Thames Reach’s Deptford Reach Community Prevention service provides advice and support to prevent or relieve homelessness, working with people to resolve is-sues with welfare benefits, landlord threats, joblessness, or health deterioration. In addi-tion to the day centre model, we now work in the community, bringing our expertise to places people already attend, enabling access for people who would not or could not use the day centre building. This has allowed us to work with a broader group offering drop-in crisis and brief intervention work and capacity for complex casework to resolve complex needs that threaten peoples’ accommodation security
More details about the London Homelessness Awards can be found at www.lhawards.org.uk
