Section: Homelessness & Rough Sleeping
Fifteen Winners Share Half a Million
Getting back to nature on the farm, increased pedal power and catering for hundreds of people were just some of the winning ideas from homeless organisations that won part of a £500,000 prize to make their business ideas a reality.
Fifteen organisations from around the country will be able to start up or develop new social enterprises after winning the funding through the Spark initiative.
The competition involved homeless organisations pitching their ideas to a panel of experts from the business and voluntary sector, in a 'Dragons' Den' style event.
As part of the winner's package the social entrepreneurs will gain further business mentoring from high profile entrepreneurs such as Nigel Kershaw from Big Issue Invest and Tim Campbell from the Apprentice.
The £1.5m Spark initiative was launched back in December 2007 by Communities and Local Government in partnership with the Voluntary Sector and the Business Sector. Voluntary sector organisations such as the Trees Group, Big Issue Invest and Eastside Consulting provided support and assistance and advice on social enterprise to the organisations. Business partners PriceWaterhouse Coopers and BT provided support, finance and mentoring to the organisations to ensure that they make the most of the opportunity.
Winners List
- Gilead Foundations' social enterprise operations centre around an organic Devon farm, which currently provides accommodation, rehabilitation, training and employment for 25 men, women and children, who would otherwise be homeless - £90,000.
- Plymouth Access to Housing (Path) believes that every person has a right to decent, affordable accommodation. It plans to establish a not-for-profit letting agency in Plymouth, charging landlords competitive fees and creating an easier route into privately-rented housing for clients - £85,000.
- Plymouth-based Shekinah Mission teaches bricklaying, plastering and art and craft skills to socially-disadvantaged and excluded adults to develop their skills and help them back into employment, accommodation and independent living, leading to full participation in society - £50,000.
- Bikeworks, a London-based community cycle organisation, plans to start up a project in partnership with the Metropolitan Police and London Cycle Campaign to recycle stolen/recovered bikes, reduce landfill and offer training and employment to homeless people - £75,000.
- The people who work at Leicester-based social enterprise STRIDE (the trading name of SHARP Trading (Leicester) Ltd) assemble, recycle, renovate, sell and deliver furniture. The enterprise aims to help disadvantaged people improve their chances in life by offering training and placements in a working environment - £50,000.
- Acumen Community Enterprise Development Trust works in disadvantaged areas of the North East. Through its social enterprise, Possibility Place, people who do not have a job or who have low skills are supported to develop skills for life and to move into employment - £50,000.
- The Salvation Army plans to set up a social enterprise that will train and employ people who have experienced homelessness and are at a point of developing skills to return to the work place. The initiative will be centred around portable appliance testing - £47,500.
- Brighton Housing Trust plans to roll-out its two-year-old "Dine!" catering project to establish it as a commercial catering service for Brighton and Hove events, providing training and employment opportunities for people who have been homeless - £20,000.
- Brent Homeless User Group (BHUG), a user-led organisation in North West London runs a social enterprise called Community Insight which provides training and employment around customer research, surveys and mystery shopping to development service users' skills, confidence and employment opportunities - £10,000.
- Chester and District Housing Trust is preparing to launch a social enterprise initiative called NEST to work with large local employers and to teach homeless people skills in painting and decorating and basic maintenance and construction - £4,000.
- Noah Enterprise provides a practical, empowering social enterprise and caring welfare service to homeless, marginalised and excluded people in Luton based around furniture restoration and white good refurbishment - £4,000.
- Novas Scarman Group's mission is to transform people's lives through arts, enterprise and community support. It has plans well underway to develop a talent agency called Can Do People, which will teach skills to people who have been homeless and place them in work - £4,000.
- StreetShine is a professional shoe care service that provides employment and training opportunities for people who have experienced homelessness or suffered disadvantage in the job market and are in the process of rebuilding their lives - £4,000.
- The Society of St James' social enterprise, Jamie's Computers, provides training and learning opportunities to those who have a history of homelessness, recent unemployment, mental health difficulties and substance misuse. Its services include IT disposal, computer sales, IT services and IT training - £4,000.
- Travelling Light, the social enterprise of Bradford-based Assisi House Project makes it possible for people from excluded groups to make music and radio, providing them with opportunities to develop new skills in music and IT whilst exploring their creativity - £4,000.
New Funding for homeless Hostels
An extra £9.6 million was announced by Housing Minister Caroline Flint to help rough sleepers make a permanent move away from the streets.
The funding will support an additional 11 projects across the country to improve and build new hostels and homelessness services, and help homeless people back into independent living by giving them new skills and training.
The new funding brings the total investment under the Government's Places of Change Programme to £80 million over the next three years, which will deliver 80 schemes, transforming hostels and homelessness services.
The additional Places of Change Programme Projects are as follows:
- Matt Talbot Hostel - The last remaining shared-room accommodation in Newcastle. It is in a dire state of repair but its location offers great opportunities for linking in with the community.
- Stop Gap - Refurbishment of a short stay assessment centre in Tynedale for single rough sleepers. This is the only provision of its kind in Northumberland.
- Bath Churches Housing Association - An underground dormitory for 35 people in Bath, beds 2 feet apart and some on the floor with an overflow into a church hall which shares space with a children's nursery. In its place an assessment centre with single room accommodation, a social enterprise and a day centre will be built.
- Shekinah Mission Resettlement Project - The grant will be used to rebuild current daycentre and 'Community Payback' workshop in Torbay to create a much larger, fit for purpose engagement, assessment and social enterprise centre. It is also proposed to build 6 training flats on the site.
- Mole Valley: Night hostel - This Leatherhead project will see dormitories of 4/5 to a room and cramped staff areas in a house in bad repair replaced with an assessment centre with short stay single room accommodation.
- The Gap - This is a day service for homeless, vulnerable and socially marginalised people in Oxford City Centre. The proposals willl enable the creation of a training kitchen for residents, an enhanced medical service, as well as refurbishment of parts of the centre.
- Bentinck Rd - This will see a training and employment centre built between a young person's and an older homeless person's hostel in Nottingham, catering for both. Framework are an excellent provider who have brought match funding from the Housing Corporation and their own resources for the whole development.
- Training for Life - A social Enterprise organisation will start up schools to train social entrepreneurs amongst homeless people themselves in Manchester and Birmingham.
- Street Life daycentre - The Blackpool Street Life Night shelter has lost its building for daytime engagement, advice and activities. This means that the hostel now only offers a bed. The proposals will purchase a town centre site that is available and equip to provide skills for young people.
- Graham House - This Central London resource is the destination for old entrenched street drinkers. Its institutional, tired and needs upgrading.
- Seymour Place - This front-line hostel, or "rolling shelter", for rough sleeping in Westminster is institutional with no space for engagement activities. The proposal is for a "Challenge Anneka"-style initiative, which will involve service users in refurbishing the interior.
Temporary Accommodation Numbers Gontinue to Fall
New figures announced by the Government revealed that the numbers of households in temporary accommodation fell by 11% in comparison to the same period last year. The figures show a drop from 87,120 in the first quarter of 2007 to 77,510 in 2008.
The figures also show that the South East, North East and the East Midlands have now all achieved the Government's 2010 target of 50% reduction in the numbers of households living in temporary accommodation from the baseline set in 2004. Overall one third of local authorities have reached the target, with more on the way.
The homelessness statistics for the first quarter of 2008 showed that homeless acceptances were down 10% from the same period last year.
Mediation services to resolve family or relationship breakdowns or offering rent deposit to aid a family make a move into accommodation were just two of the methods that housing authorities and their partners have employed to prevent households from becoming homeless.
Ex-service Homelessness in London Report Published
Research into homelessness amongst the ex-Service community was published by York University. The study called The Experiences of Homeless Ex Service Personnel in London found that the percentage of Veterans in London's homeless population has reduced from 22% in 1997 to 6% in 2007.
Key findings of the report included:
- Homeless veterans have better access to emergency accommodation and resettlement resources than other single homeless people.
- Less than one in six of those surveyed cited problems adjusting to civilian life as the cause of their difficulties.
- Only a small minority of homeless veterans reported vulnerabilities unique to Service life, such as combat related post-traumatic stress disorder.
York University was commissioned to undertake research into homelessness in London by the Ex-Service Action Group on Homelessness (ESAG). The aim was to assess the nature of the problem in London and the effectiveness of interventions in preventing homelessness.
The study surveyed 59 ex-Service personnel and follows an interim report published in June 2006. The report looked at the characteristics and experiences of homeless veterans identified in the study; routes to homelessness and the effectiveness of provision for homeless Veterans in London.
The report has made a number of recommendations to further improve support available to homeless veterans.
The report is available at www.york.ac.uk/chp.
