Homeless charities, led by Thames Reach, are joining forces with the Government to deliver a new ambition to employ at least 10 per cent of their workforce from ex-homeless people.
The new plan, backed by £200,000 of investment, will help around 800 people to find work in the voluntary sector over the next 2 years. The initiative will focus on the 46 biggest homeless organisations before moving on to other smaller charities across England.
Under the scheme homeless charities will be given a bespoke consultancy service to help them employ ex-homeless people. The charities will get support to set up training courses across many areas of their business, including IT, finance and client counselling.
The aim of the National GROW Programme is to change the culture of the homelessness sector in England so that it fully embraces employing service users. It has widespread support across the sector, including from St George's Crypt in Leeds.
This programme will be one of the measures that will form part of the Government's updated rough sleeping strategy to be released later this year, aiming to drive down rough sleeping further to as close to zero as possible. New annual figures show a continued fall in the number of rough sleepers to 483, on any given night - a 74 per cent reduction from the 1,850 figure in 1998, and sustaining the Government's commitment to reduce rough sleeping by two thirds.
New national statistics released today show great strides have been made in cutting homelessness with the number of those accepted as homeless having been halved since the same time five years ago. In Yorkshire & the Humber, the figures fell in that period from 3,740 to 1,870. As a result of sustained investment, (which will amount to over £400m by 2011), the statistics also show the number of households living in temporary accommodation has fallen by more than 10,000 since this time last year, and fell from 2,150 to 1,840 in Yorkshire & the Humber.
