Longhurst Group partners with national charity to further improve homelessness services

We’re delighted to have become a member of Homeless Link – a membership charity that brings together organisations that work with homeless people.

We’ve become a member of the group and have already benefited from their Trauma Informed Support training, which is being rolled out to all supported housing colleagues.

This training develops a completely different approach to working with vulnerable people, focusing on their assets rather than their deficits and using a more positive approach to gathering required information.

Fay Hirel, Head of Care and Support, said: “Homeless Link campaign for policy change and can give advice and guidance to services, as well as assist colleagues with challenges on decisions made by local authorities.

“We’re delighted to have become a member of Homeless Link and one of the key reasons for this is to access the range of training and resources they offer.

“Homeless Link was also recommended to us as the go-to training provider for Trauma Informed Support training, which we’ve already done with managers and is now being rolled out to supported housing colleagues.

“Trauma Informed Support training promotes a positive way of working, while being mindful that many of the people we work with have faced lots of trauma in their lives.

“It helps us to look at people’s assets rather than deficits and is all about how you interact with somebody and how you recognise your unconscious bias. This is also the standard that commissioners look for and recognise as gold-star practice for working with vulnerable people.

“This is a standard we want to embed through all of our services, not just homelessness and we’re training all colleagues so we’re all working in the same way.”

Fay added that, when the world is not experiencing a pandemic, Homeless Link also hold regular conferences with good keynote speakers and workshops.

She said: “Hopefully, when we can collaborate properly, our membership will bring about more partnership working with like-minded individuals and ensure we’re current – and even ahead – in terms of innovations, sharing ideas and best practice.

“If we use our membership to make sure we’re up-to-date with industry standards, we can also be more competitive when new services are commissioned.

“Our first interaction with Homeless Link has been the roll-out of the Trauma Informed Support training with managers and the feedback we’ve had has been very positive.

“Lots of people have said it was really good training and even I’ve changed my approach to team meetings as a result of it.

“For feedback to be as positive as it was fills me with confidence moving forward.”