Activating places of change

As part of the Places of Change programme, £450,000 of revenue funding was made available to projects that had received capital funding through the HCIP.  

In order to support the vision of the Places of Change agenda, a small grants programme called “Activating Places of Change” (APoC) was set up by Communities & Local Government (CLG) to pay for services to embed the ethos of meaningful activity into their services.  This includes looking at routes to employment, training and education and the sense that homelessness services should find ways to inspire and motivate those staying in them. 

The rationale behind the APoC programme is that by providing engaging activities boredom is reduced, motivation increases, evictions and exclusions reduce and service users are encouraged to move on with their lives. 

Homeless Link was involved in the distribution of the APoC grants to services working with homeless people.

Moving On

Projects funded in 2008/9 are now coming to an end. You can read some of the stories of eight of the projects that received funding in our 'Celebrating Places of Change' booklet, funded by CLG.

As you will read, there are a wide variety of ways for a service to enable change, from formal training programmes to engagement activities such as gardening or music projects.  What all these activities do have in common is that they provide the foundations for people to begin to confront bigger, long term problems and move on in their lives.