Have Your Say! Join In The Survey On Homelessness
Homeless Link want to hear about your experiences locally, your views on the Government’s Rough Sleeping Strategy and the challenges and opportunities you are facing.
Small community and faith-based organisations have a long history of offering support to people who are homeless and rough sleeping. However, all too often these important services are not sufficiently engaged with or involved at a local level so they can be part of the solution to ending homelessness and rough sleeping.
Homeless Link have announced they will be working in partnership with Housing Justice on this project, reaching out and hearing directly from small charities (under £1m income) and faith-based groups working on homelessness. This project over the next year will involve three roundtables bringing small and faith-based organisations together to directly feed in to the Government’s work on rough sleeping and help identify what their key priorities should be.
The starting point of the project is the survey (link below), and they are keen to hear from staff, volunteers and trustees of small and/or faith based organisations and as many organisations as possible working at a local level supporting people who are homeless. The survey findings, as well as the outputs from the roundtables, will be shared with Government so that they will hear directly from you on the frontline about your views, experiences and contributions to supporting people who are homeless. They really want to hear from you so please complete the survey and share it with other local organisations working to support people who are homeless.
Kathy Mohan, Chief Executive, Housing Justice, said: “I am really pleased that Housing Justice has been invited to work with Homeless Link as part of this engagement with a whole range of organisations that serve people who are homeless. Smaller charities, community groups, churches and other faith-based organisations do a huge amount to respond to homelessness.”
“Just as rough sleeping has increased, so has the volunteer effort to serve those experiencing homelessness. At Housing Justice, we currently support a network of 125 church and community night shelters across the country, with new night shelters being launched every year. It is heartening that so many people across the country want to step in and be part of the solution – doing what they can to support others in their time of need.”
“This survey has been prepared and is now being circulated widely in an attempt to find out what is happening across the country; where things need to change and where they are working well. The results of this survey will be presented to central government who are recognising the part that faith and community groups have been quietly playing over many years, offering hospitality and companionship to those who would otherwise have to sleep rough.”
“I strongly encourage all of you to complete the survey- it won’t take long and this is a great opportunity to have our voices heard at a time when I truly believe there is a real willingness to hear it.”
The deadline for completion is Monday 24th June 2019.
