As the Homeless Housing Options project enters it’s second year, we are continually looking at new ways to change perceptions about homelessness.
One of our key areas of focus is so called “hidden homelessness”. The vast majority of our clients as part of this project have never slept rough, and many of them didn’t even consider themselves as homeless.
We delivered a programme for the first year of the project under the name “Knowledge Exchange”. We wanted to hear from third sector organisations what their experiences and understanding of homelessness were in the context of the individuals they were working with. We held sessions with a variety of organisations working across disability, older people and members of the Armed Forces community.
One of our main takeaways from these sessions was that while staff at these organisations were committed to supporting their service users but weren’t always equipped to identify homelessness outside of rough sleeping. Many believed that they didn’t really deal with people who were dealing with homelessness, because they weren’t aware of the many ways someone can be homeless.
We realised that this gap in knowledge across the sector is something we could help with. We have now formulated our new “Homeless First Aid” project. We want to help organisations to recognise the symptoms of hidden homelessness in their service users, even when they don’t recognise it in themselves.
We believe a simple 1-hour session will give organisations enough information to change the way they think about homelessness. During the sessions we lay out the variety of circumstances which would qualify a household as statutorily homeless, as well as some tips and things to look out for which can help. We’ll also give an overview of our service and how we can help, and how to make a referral.
The sessions are FREE and can be adapted and tailored to the needs of the individual organisation. There is plenty of time for questions and discussion too.
The aim of these sessions is to empower organisations and their staff/volunteers to do their bit in preventing homelessness, and to ensure that homelessness is recognised as something that goes beyond rough sleeping.
To find out more about Homeless First Aid, or to take part – contact Pedro at pedro@housingoptionsscotland.org.uk