Housing and advice
This team of workers provides a specialist advice service to people who are newly homeless or at risk of becoming street homeless. Through a mixture of initial assessments, a daily emergency housing duty service as well as longer term case working, the team places a strong emphasis on preventing rough sleeping within the central London area. A key area of our work is aimed at re-connecting people (who are not currently sleeping rough in the West End) away from the area.
Through a process of assessment, advocacy and joint working, we link our service users back into services in their local area. This preserves local connections and friendships and reduces the risk of further exclusion.
We run separate services for young people (aged 16-25) and for older people aged 26+ as their needs and experience differ and legislation often affects them differently. We offer a daily emergency duty service for both groups. These specialist services offer one-to-one advice and support from Monday to Friday, for clients whose needs are primarily related to housing, welfare and emotional issues and a general advice and advocacy service.
We also offer assistance to homeless people with more complex issues such as mental health and emotional support, fleeing violence, drug and alcohol misuse and physical health concerns. Our aim is to help people to successfully reintegrate back into society and live a more independent lifestyle.
Substance misuse
The Substance Misuse team provides advice, information and support to clients on harm minimisation. As well as providing advice and support to specific clients, the Substance Misuse worker also has a wider remit to promote substance misuse awareness and prevention to rough sleepers, young people, older people and across the organisation as a whole. We may also work towards making referrals to local drug and alcohol treatment services as well as appropriate housing services.
We also run a weekly group session called Headspace for our young homeless clients. Headspace is a drugs awareness programme for under 26 year olds. The programme is popular due to its informative, fun and educational format and enables us to support and inform young people about drugs and alcohol.
Mental Health
We offer a place where people feel safe and can discuss their emotional and mental well being with specialised mental health workers. We provide a valuable and comprehensive service which also offers casework to those in need of intensive advice & support, through befriending, on-going assessments and action plans.
The service is geared towards a holistic assessment of the client’s emotional and mental health stability as well as more practical needs.
The team has strong links with mental health services, hospitals, police, and Community Mental Health Teams, as well as housing resources, across the London area.