Six projects make it to shortlist for prestigious 2018 awards
Six projects from across London have been shortlisted for the prestigious London Homelessness Awards and are in the running to win the first prize of £30000.
The London Homelessness Awards are sponsored by the London Housing Foundation, London Housing Directors, GLA, Crisis and Shelter. Organisers received over 35 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 18th.
Simon Dow is the Chair of the judging panel London Homelessness Awards. He said: “The panel were extremely impressed with the quality of entries this year which demonstrates yet again what an excellent job organisations across the capital are doing to help people who are homeless. It was a tough choice to get to six but we think these projects show real innovation, sustainability and commitment to help reduce homelessness in London.”
The six shortlisted projects (in alphabetical order) are:
- BEAM crowdfunding project
- Brent Single Homeless Prevention Service
- Cambridge House Safer renting
- Croydon Gateway, Community Connect and Food Stop
- Safer London Pan-London Housing Reciprocal
- South London and Maudsley Psychology in Hostels project.
More details about each of the projects is available below and on the website www.lhawards.org.uk
For more information, pictures or interviews please contact Mark Wall on mark@markwall.co.uk or call 0790 999 3278
Beam
Beam is an innovative online service that uses crowdfunding to help homeless people to raise money for training courses and professional qualifications – then supports each individual through training and into work.
Clients (known as “members”) are recommended to Beam by respected homelessness charities including Centrepoint, St Mungo’s and Thames Reach. Beam builds an asset-based, personalised career plan with the member and crowdfunds not only training costs, but any financial barriers to career progression, including childcare. Beam purchases items on behalf of members and further provides work experience and job roles through its employer network.
In just ten months, Beam has proven a powerful new model to create opportunities for a diverse group of people experiencing homelessness, who benefit hugely from increased self-confidence from messages of support from those who fund the campaigns (known as “supporters”). Beam has raised over £110,000 from over 1,500 supporters to fund campaigns for 28 members. 18 members are currently in training, 5 are in jobs and just 2 have withdrawn from the programme. 90% of donations go transparently to “Budget items” on each member’s campaign.
Beam “graduates” already in work include Joe – homeless for over a decade – now working as a crane rigger on the Northern Line extension. Joe was referred by Thames Reach and raised £1,132 from 19 supporters in just five days. Other Beam graduates are working as electricians, delivery drivers and construction site managers, while other Beam members are training for rewarding careers in everything from bricklaying to accountancy.
Brent Single Homeless Prevention Service
Brent Single Homeless Prevention Service (SHPS) is the first homeless prevention service for single people in the UK to be delivered on a ‘payment by results’ basis, supporting the Local Authority to achieve their obligations under the Homelessness Reduction Act.
Crisis and Thames Reach are working together with the London Borough of Brent and Bridges Fund Management, a specialist impact investor, to support up to 1,755 people over two years. Working with single people – and other households without dependent children – the programme seeks to engage with those at risk of homelessness early to prevent homelessness, and to help those already homeless find suitable accommodation.
The programme has been designed – by commissioners in partnership with the third sector – to reward providers for achieving sustained, long-term housing outcomes for these people. And because of this focus on outcomes, the providers have much more flexibility to tailor their interventions to individual circumstances.
To date the service has supported 287 people, and already moved 111 people away from homelessness and rough sleeping.
SHPS helps the Local Authority in Brent meet its statutory requirements under the HRA, enabling it to support a group of people that have often been neglected by existing services (because they did not meet the criteria for statutory housing provision or for support from homeless organisations).
But it goes much further than that: the programme aims to transform service users’ circumstances, enabling them to sustain high-quality stable housing, and thereby creating the necessary long-term foundations for a better life.
Cambridge House Safer Renting
Eviction from private rented housing is the primary driver of rising homelessness in London. Safer Renting works with people in bottom-end private rented housing (‘slum’ rentals), providing advice and advocacy to prevent homelessness. Our clients typically have little or no knowledge of their housing rights and are not connected to mainstream networks of advice. The service:
- Reaches at-risk tenants and victims of criminal landlords
- Provides expert outreach advice and advocacy
- Secures accessible legal representation
- Provides non-legal advocacy support where appropriate
These activities help tenants achieve a range of positive outcomes, minimizing the risk of homelessness by:
- Sustaining tenancies through advocacy and preventing illegal evictions
- Challenging ‘no fault’ evictions to delay or prevent repossession
- Supporting tenants to find suitable housing
- Supporting tenants to secure compensation
- Equipping tenants with knowledge of their housing rights
- Referral to broader support e.g. health, debt advice, migrant advice/support
Our mobile outreach teams identify at-risk tenants of offending landlords by intelligence gathering across multiple local authority teams. We provide customized advice and hands-on advocacy, intervening where there is high risk of homelessness. We have worked with 200 households in partnership with four London boroughs (Croydon, Hounslow, Enfield, Waltham Forest), with the following outcomes:
- 77% homelessness prevention where the tenants’ preferred outcome was secured
- 100% street homelessness prevention
- 100% illegal eviction prevention
- 6 successful cases to secure out-of-court compensation for tenants
Croydon’s Gateway, Community Connect and Food Stop
Croydon’s Gateway approach prevents households from experiencing crisis and having to rely on statutory services. Focussing on early intervention and prevention it assists residents that are homeless, at risk of homelessness or struggling financially.
Community Connect/Food Stop moves the innovative Gateway approach into the community. It enables the community to develop its own solutions for residents, help prevent homelessness and build community resilience.
In 2017/2018 the Gateway approach has:
- Helped more than 2,400 families avoid homelessness
- Given budgeting support to over 14,900 people
- Supported over 4,700 people on Universal Credit to improve their digital skills
- Seen a 15% reduction in the number of people applying as homeless
- Cut the cost of giving people emergency accommodation by £2m
- Increased the homeless prevention rate from 25% to 58%
- Reduced the numbers in emergency accommodation from 824 to 667
Community Connect/Food Stop is a partnership between the Council, the Family Centre, FareShare and over thirty voluntary, community, public and private sector organisations. It provides a single access point and helps residents achieve financial stability. Residents who sign up get around £20 worth of fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, dairy and other foods for £3.50 per week. The scheme is innovative because it provides a “hand up’ not a ‘hand out’ Members have access to tailored support such as a community job club, homelessness prevention, debt management and personal budgeting support. By providing a clear pathway to financial stability, improved housing options and employment it makes a powerful, immediate impact on the lives of local families.
Safer London
Safer London launched the Pan-London Housing Reciprocal (PLHR) in January 2017, a new and innovative way to prevent homelessness that does not exist in any other city or country worldwide.
Their research found that survivors of domestic abuse in London often experience long periods of housing instability, moving between refuges, hostels, temporary accommodation and short term private tenancies. Insecure housing can be a re-traumatising experience that can put survivors at further risk. For those with a social tenancy, the prospect of losing this security can be an additional barrier to fleeing abuse.
To facilitate the Reciprocal, Safer London has secured the agreement of 32 local authorities and 43 housing associations to support tenants experiencing domestic abuse, other forms of violence against women/girls, gang-related violence, hate crime or other abuse. This allows resettlement to an area where tenants are away for risk and can keep a social tenancy. They have already supported 132 adults and children who are fleeing abuse to find safe, long-term housing; an average of three households moving per month.
Safer London has also reached approximately 1000 professionals through delivering over 35 training and awareness raising sessions, ranging from webinars to two high profile events at City Hall.
In a sector that was divided by local authority boundaries 75 housing partners are now working together to support their tenants at risk of abuse. Coordinated by Safer London, this new approach demonstrates an innovative way of working in partnership that offers huge potential for the housing sector across the UK.
SLAM, Thamesreach and Lambeth Psychology in Hostels
This partnership between South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, Thames Reach and the London Borough of Lambeth is a national leader in delivering ‘Psychologically Informed Environments’ (PIE) to address the health inequalities found in homelessness. Over the past 6 years the Psychology in Hostels project has developed the UK’s most advanced PIE, wrapping three hostel sites in a ‘psychological envelope’ where everything that happens is informed by a psychological understanding of the service user’s needs.
The psychologists work within a multi-agency team, including residents, to design and deliver the service. By offering a highly skilled staff mix of doctoral level clinical psychologists and hostel teams, the usual barriers to service access are removed, as are service exclusion criteria such as current substance misuse or discharge on non-attendance.
By being on site the psychologists become familiar faces, and so can work indirectly via the keyworker or creatively engage residents through informal activities which can feel less threatening (e.g. walking the dog, gardening, having a cup of tea).
In the three-year pilot over 200 service users engaged with the team and 1650 therapy sessions were offered with 78% attendance rate. 1150 hostel staff-focused interventions for Thames Reach staff (reflective practice, training) resulted in an increased sense of personal accomplishment and increased work engagement.
