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Moving People Forward
These pages are about the things that services working with homeless people can do to help them improve their lives, improve their confidence and motivation and address some of the issues that may have contributed to or arisen from their homelessness. They also include information resources and good practice examples about making hostels and day centres "Places of Change". Although written from the point of view of service providers, these pages recognise that services cannot impose change on individuals, only provide the opportunities, space and support that allow people to make changes to their own lives.
What's New?
- Homeless Link has been commissioned by Communities and Local Government (CLG) and the Home Office to support and administer a £290,000 grants scheme to help services working with homeless people provide positive activities. The Activating Places of Change grants are only available to services that have received funding under the CLG's Hostels Capital Improvement Programme (HCIP).
The Issues
Meaningful Occupation and involvement in arts or sport can make a real difference to the lives of homeless people, giving them confidence, utilising their talents and often leading to employment opportunities.
Other ways of moving people forward include lifeskills, keyworking, motivational interviewing, Cognitive Behavioural (CBT) and solution-based therapies.
The Places of Change agenda aims to encourage homelessness services to focus on moving service users forward, including improving their access to meaningful occupation and training and employment opportunities. A key part of this is ensuring that the physical spaces used by services allow them to work in this way. Making hostels in particular "places of change" is one of the main aims of Homeless Link's regional development work across the country.