PASSAGE 2000
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Mission Statement
The mission of The Passage is to provide resources which encourage, inspire and challenge homeless people to transform their lives. The principal activities of the company are street outreach work with rough sleepers in Westminster the operation of a Resource Centre, a direct access hostel, Passage House, and the management of 16 self-contained flats, Montfort House, for homeless people in the Victoria area of London. The Resource Centre provides basic support through provision of showers and toilets, laundry, clothing store, cooked breakfast, lunch, tea, coffee and soft drinks. The Resource centre also provides healthcare including mental health and substance misuse work, employment and training work, support in finding housing and financial advice including welfare rights. We also provide support to people who have been homeless through our Home for Good scheme. This provides befriending and mentoring by volunteers in the area where the individual now lives and a weekend social club.
About This Cause
The mission of The Passage is to provide resources which encourage, inspire and challenge homeless people to transform their lives. The principal activities of the company are street outreach work with rough sleepers in Westminster the operation of a Resource Centre, a direct access hostel, Passage House, and the management of 16 self-contained flats, Montfort House, for homeless people in the Victoria area of London. The Resource Centre provides basic support through provision of showers and toilets, laundry, clothing store, cooked breakfast, lunch, tea, coffee and soft drinks. The Resource centre also provides healthcare including mental health and substance misuse work, employment and training work, support in finding housing and financial advice including welfare rights. We also provide support to people who have been homeless through our Home for Good scheme. This provides befriending and mentoring by volunteers in the area where the individual now lives and a weekend social club to help combat isolation. Our Hospital discharge team make contact with people in hospital who are at risk of homelessness on discharge. The Resource Centre provides services for up to 200 people daily. 2,117 different clients used the resource centre in the year to 31 March 2014. These clients made 28,410 visits to the centre. Many of those visiting the centre have suffered a traumatic event such as the breakdown of a relationship or perhaps through illness, and find themselves homeless and desperate. Many clients can be best supported by encouraging them to return to their home area (if support is available in that area) and linking them back into that support and away from sleeping on the streets of Central London. The Passage provides that support by reconnecting them to their home area. Day Services comprises three specialisms – Hospitality, Assessment and Advice, and Health. These teams in effect run the Resource Centre and are the first staff new clients meet when they visit the Resource Centre. Over the course of the past year there has been a significant recruitment of new volunteers, including client volunteers, and this has meant we now have volunteers working in the team 7 days a week. New volunteers have a diverse range of skills and carry out a broad range of roles from carrying out initial assessments with new clients, to running the laundry or clothing store, to assisting a client when they move into their new accommodation. Hospitality’s role is to make sure all clients are welcomed to the centre and are seen for an initial assessment so that the client is able to tell staff what their situation is and what help they need. These assessments are completed in the Resource Centre on a daily basis and in the past year we have achieved 89% assessments being carried out on the first visit clients make. Due to the increase in the number of individuals who cannot speak English the team have had to arrange for an interpreter to attend the initial assessments for a significant number and this has affected our target of 95% for assessing all new clients on their first visit. Over the past year we have re-established specialist advice sessions for this client group twice a week where we are able to carry out assessments and general advice and signposting to other more appropriate services. We are also excited to be participating in a new project in collaboration with Lift to embed East European Peer Navigators at the Resource Centre who will support East European individuals who are at risk of homelessness or newly arrived on streets. They will speak a variety of languages and will be able to give advice and signpost to ensure effective assistance around users’ needs to prevent homelessness. The Assessment and Advice team consists of a Team Leader, four Housing Advisors and an Irish Persons Co-ordinator. The team provides housing advice, makes referrals into a range of accommodation options, advocates on behalf of clients when trying to prevent eviction and repeat homelessness, and offers comprehensive pre-tenancy and post-tenancy support to clients. The team have supported 53 clients to reconnect to their home areas. This work involves assisting clients to re-establish links with services in their local area, such as accommodation and health services, as well as with family and friends. This work is essential to preventing people from becoming entrenched rough sleepers. The health team consists of a Team Leader, two mental health workers and two substance misuse workers who engage with a diverse client group with a wide variety of complex needs. We also have an NHS medical service offering primary health care. We work with individuals to help them to begin to place some value upon their well-being. Many who visit us have experienced failure or rejection, breakdown of family relationships or other traumas, pushing them to the margins of the community and leading to low self-worth, ambivalence, the loss of healthy social networks and to homelessness itself. While living on the streets, people cannot protect themselves from illness and illnesses can become chronic when the person is sleeping out and not seeking treatment. Many of our clients are embarrassed or uncomfortable accessing mainstream medical services especially when they need it the most as their health deteriorates on the streets. Because of this The Passage has developed an extensive and holistic health service within the centre. The Employment, Training and Welfare Rights Team provides facilities and training to help clients find paid work. The team is made up of an Education, Training and Employment (ETE) department, Professional Mentoring and a Welfare Rights team. The team currently comprises a Project Manager and Deputy Manager, two Welfare Rights Workers, a Mentoring Coordinator and two Education and Employment Project Workers. Job Centre Plus supplies a benefit and job search sessional worker three times a week to assist clients with job search and benefit advice. The team also has 12 highly skilled volunteers who assist with a wide range of tasks from teaching literacy to helping clients brush up on their interview skills. The on-going economic situation continues to affect our clients’ ability to gain employment. Despite this 60 (compared to 53 last year) client job outcomes were gained this year. ETWR provides training materials and mock tests for the CSCS (Construction Skills Certification Scheme) Health and Safety testing. This is necessary for anyone who wishes to work on most construction sites. 26 clients have completed this course. New Initiatives Home for Good We have recently begun to develop the new Home for Good project, which focuses on preventing repeat homelessness through providing on-going support to clients who have been resettled into their own accommodation. We have recruited a coordinator to run the new weekend social club based in central London, and are in the process of developing a volunteer-led service to provide local support across Greater London. Home for Good will not only help clients to maintain their tenancies, but also to integrate into their new communities through helping them to access a range of services, opportunities and activities available in their local area. Before You Go In response to a significant and increasing number of economic migrants sleeping rough across London, The Passage has developed an awareness raising campaign on homelessness prevention for several countries. The project is focused on raising awareness amongst potential economic migrants of the benefits of proper preparation prior to travelling, and how to increase their chances of a successful transition to life in the UK. The campaign was developed in partnership with government agencies, frontline charities and faith communities from those countries targeted. Hospital Discharge Project Day Services also now have an additional specialism in the work of the Hospital Discharge Team. The Passage along with partner agencies, CSTM and West London Mission, were successful in receiving a year’s funding from the Department of Health to prevent homeless people being discharged to the streets. RESIDENTIAL SERVICES Passage House Passage House is a 40 bed hostel providing accommodation and support services to vulnerable rough sleepers. The clients have mixed and varied support needs and diverse histories but all have one thing in common – they have been sleeping rough on the streets in Westminster. Over the past year we have seen a significant increase in the needs levels of those coming to Passage House with more clients than ever before suffering with severe and enduring mental health issues or very high levels of drug and/or alcohol use. We are very proud that Passage House received straight A grades in its Supporting People review at the beginning of 2014, demonstrating the excellent work of the project. Montfort House Montfort House, consisting of 16 self-contained flats, continues to target the most entrenched and vulnerable people – male and female - in Westminster (the RS 205 client group, originally the 205 longest term rough sleepers). The team has developed to meet the changing needs of the client group and project and now consists of a manager and 3 support workers. Our flexible hands-off approach has been very successful, so much so that we have developed our own policy around professional boundaries and best practice when working with entrenched clients called Real Relationships. We have also developed a client handbook which is presented in user friendly language and contains useful information about the project and the local area and the staff team. In addition to the developments detailed above we have introduced a number of other creative interventions designed to support our clients in maintaining their accommodation. Elastic Evictions is one of these interventions and is designed to give the client a way of returning to the project in situations where safety is not compromised.