The Day Centre

St. Clare's Day Centre provides a variety of basic needs services, including a cooked breakfast and food to take away, showers, clothing and even access to a hairdresser. Day centre staff also provide casework and advice. Taking a more holistic approach to solving an individual's homelessness, the day centre also runs a long list of therapeutic activities for clients, aimed at improving their self-esteem.

The Invest to Save Approach

Jenny, Carol and Mick at St Clare's

St. Clare's took a snapshot of clients’ use of local services to see how often they required public service interventions such as detention or ambulance services. An estimate of the cost to the local area was then made. Coupled with evidence of the damage caused by homelessness to a person's health, this type of Invest to Save approach was crucial in evidencing St. Clare's claim to help Worthing achieve its goal of preventing premature mortality in an effective and cost-efficient manner. Between January and November 2007, 18 evictions have been prevented, avoiding the costs to the local area that would have been incurred by those peoples' homelessness. Moreover, St. Clare's has made an invaluable contribution to 18 individual lives and their families and communities. In spite of their success, however, the St. Clare’s team has said that it would have been very helpful to have a ready-made Invest to Save model, such as the spreadsheet currently being piloted by Homeless Link (click here to see the pilot project page).

Outcome 22 of the West Sussex LAA

Perhaps the most encouraging part of the St. Clare's LAA funding story is that the outcome under which it obtained funding was not directly related to homelessness. With some clever networking and a little creativity in its funding bid, especially in using an Invest to Save approach, St. Clare's was able to attach its services to Outcome 22 of the West Sussex LAA, which is about preventing premature mortality. So St. Clare's did not actually have to modify any of the services it was already providing - it just had to show how the outcomes of those services fed into the goals already established by the local area.

How LAA funding has affected St. Clare's

While the actual services provided by St. Clare's remain largely the same as before it obtained LAA funding, some things have changed for the day centre. First of all, as mentioned above, LAA funding has given St. Clare's the resources to make a part-time post a full-time post and thereby work even harder at preventing homelessness and helping people out of homelessness. New obligations have come with this new source of funding. While Worthing's reporting standards are fairly light (especially considering the great volume of data that St. Clare's collects from its clients), WCHP is now formally required to provide training to the borough council housing options workers. Far from a burden, however, WCHP has found that this formalisation of its relationship with Worthing Council has helped it to attain better partnership working. For example, the council now refers people who are having trouble making their rent payments directly to the day centre. Mick Gisbey, manager of St. Clare's day centre, has said that the service is more readily accepted when approaching the council about issues affecting the homeless.

Some advice from those who have 'been there, done that':

• Get involved in your local area

As Carol Lucey, general manager of WCHP, says, 'you've got to be out there!' For starters, Carol is a member of the Local Strategic Partnership, the sub-group for the LAA, the Worthing Health and Wellbeing Partnership, and chairs the Worthing Borough Homelessness Forum. She emphasises how important it is to be a visible and well-known part of the community, to make connections with local authorities and other organisations.

• Collect good data

While different day centres will collect different information on their services and from their clients depending on their organisational philosophy, it is important to collect as much as you possibly can within your values. The more evidence you have not only that people are using your services but that these services are improving their lives and resolving their homelessness, the more convincing a case you will have to present to funders. When using the Invest to Save spreadsheet, for example, a minimum level of data about numbers of clients and costs of services is required, but the more information that can be provided, the more professional and persuasive your arguments will seem. It is a good idea not only to monitor service use and client needs, but also to use an outcomes monitoring system, such as the outcomes star, to record improvements in clients' lives. St. Clare's follows the motto: 'if it moves, we monitor it!'

• Be creative

It is important to be creative and flexible, to try and fit your organisation's work into pre-existing targets. Resolving and preventing homelessness has so many benefits in so many areas that it can be worked into an LAA agenda even if there are no targets relating directly to homelessness. With a little imagination and some good data to help you prove your point, you'd be surprised at how you can work your organisation's accomplishments into your community's agenda.

• Stay on top of things

Part of the reason that WCHP managed to secure funding from the LAA is because its team was well-informed and quick to jump at an opportunity. Keep yours ears pricked up so you can get on top of any new developments in your LAA and in your community that could benefit your day centre.

Click here to return to the pilot project page