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Funding Support
With Shelter currently estimating over 320,000 homeless people in the UK, it is no wonder that more and more statutory and voluntary organisations are referring their homeless clients to our supported accommodation. Our limiting factor is lack of funding for our Support Workers who help residents to work towards gaining independent living skills. This support is vital to the success of the individuals, and there is no statutory entitlement to funding for this support, so we now have a crowdfunding page where the public can make a donation to support our work with individuals who are experiencing homelessness. Providing this support is by far the most cost effective way of helping people out of homelessness, so in addition to the crowdfunding www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/homeless-support we also carry out some trading activities to also raise funds.
Supported Housing Development
The increased recognition of the need for supported housing for individuals, and the increasing numbers of people forced to sleep rough on our streets, means that the demand for good quality supported housing is increasing, and we have risen to this challenge by increasing our capacity from 27 rooms to 39 rooms in the past 2 years (a 40% increase in capacity). As well as making more rooms available, we are also constantly improving the quality of the accommodation, and our processes to monitor this. Our accommodation and service level improvements adapt to the ever changing needs of our residents, our referral partners, and the regulatory bodies, to ensure that we provide the quality and value demanded by all parties.
Trading for Self-Sustainment
As we receive no government grants, no local authority funding, and no funding from grant making trusts, we have to raise funds ourselves to pay for the support that we provide to our residents. We have chosen to utilise our expertise to offer services to individuals and businesses:
- Choice 4 Business is a utility brokerage that helps small businesses to save money on their utility services.
- Disability Claim Service helps individuals to claim the disability benefits that they should be entitled to, mainly focussing on claims for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and Attendance Allowance (AA).
100% of the profits earned from these activities (along with sums donated to our crowdfunding page) are then donated to help fund the cost of providing the support service to residents, which then enables more homeless people to be helped.