Running an effective Day Service

This page is for managers and staff working in Day Services as well as anyone who would like to understand more about the role of Day Services in ending homelessness. It provides information as well as links to useful guidance, webinars and relevant training.

The term "Day Services" is used here as an umbrella term for services that offer support to people experiencing homelessness in a non-residential space which will include Day Centres, Resource Centres, Hubs, Advice Centres and many other models.

What's on this page

• The role and scope of Day Services
• Approach and ethos
• Trauma-informed Day Services including being strengths-based and co-production
• Running an effective Day Service
• Funding and fundraising
• Managing data and evidencing impact
• Supporting and managing staff
• Partnership working

The role and scope of Day Services

Day Services are at the forefront of the response to homelessness and are often the first port of call for people experiencing rough sleeping and other forms of homelessness. According to the most recent Annual Review of Support for Single Homeless People, there were around 168 Day Services in England in 2023 with approximately 127, 486 people accessing Day Services each year.

Day Services offer non-accommodation-based support for those sleeping rough, experiencing or at risk of other forms of homelessness. ‘Day Services’ is a catch-all term that covers a broad range of services from small drop-ins providing food and clothes to structured services delivering targeted advice and learning activities.

Around half of Day Services receive their main source of income from statutory commissions from the Local Authority, health or adult social care. The remainder are funded by a mixture of grants, fundraising and philanthropy. This can mean that many Day Services operate more independently of the Local Authority than some other homelessness service providers. This can allow freedom to develop innovative responses to changing local need and to work with diverse groups of people.

Day Services are commonly provided and run by grass roots, voluntary, faith, or community organisations and have often emerged in response to a local need. Each service is unique, however there are a number of common features.

• Day Services have regular contact with a large number of people experiencing homelessness. A snapshot count indicates 3,376 people access Day Services in England on any given day.
• Most Day Services offer open or low threshold access to those who others may exclude, such as people with no recourse to public funds.
• Very few Day Services have time limits on their services. This enables staff and volunteers to develop trusting relationships with people who may not be in regular contact with other services.
• Some Day Services serve communities where no other homelessness provision exists.
• As the first point of contact for many people experiencing homelessness, Day Services can play a clear role in homelessness prevention through timely advice and referrals.
• Many Day Services run activities to engage people positively and reduce social isolation and exclusion.

There are a number of key ways in which Day Services  can use their unique  position within the community to end homelessness.

1. Evidence local need and emerging trends. For example, most Day Services play a key role in informing rough sleeping snapshot estimates.
2. Respond rapidly to the needs of people newly experiencing rough sleeping to prevent rough sleeping where possible and ensure it is brief and non-recurring in other cases.
3. Deliver timely advice and referrals as well as positive activities to build confidence and support people to move beyond homelessness.
4. Work in partnership with other services to support delivery of targeted and structured support.

Approach and Ethos

Each service should work according to their organisation’s overall mission and values. Having a set of guiding principles is important and developing a theory of change can be a useful way of ensuring that the activities offered work towards your overall goal.

The following are some core values that each service may want to consider:

• Trauma-informed
• A place of safety
• Strengths-based
• Lived experience at the heart – co-production
• Equality, diversity and inclusion
• Strong partnerships
• A place of progress and transformation
• Continual reflection, review and development

Trauma-informed Day Services

The unique position of Day Services provides key opportunities for trauma-informed working. Day Services often provide practical supportive services creating opportunities for more informal interactions. This can enable staff to develop trusting relationships over time. Conversely as with many services supporting people with a mixture of needs, Day Services can experience disruptions that make the space feel unsafe for both staff and attendees.

Trauma-informed care (TIC) is a relationship-based approach which can be adopted by organisations to improve awareness of trauma and its impact, to ensure that the services offer effective support and, above all, that they do not re-traumatise those accessing or working in services. This is an approach that can be applied in all settings, including Day Services.

Many people experiencing homelessness have also experienced trauma in their past. In addition, homelessness is a traumatic event in itself and exposes people to further risk of harm. Research commissioned by Oasis Community Housing found that 92% of people experiencing homelessness had experienced trauma, and almost two-thirds of respondents reported experiencing four or more traumatic experiences, or trauma over a prolonged period.

All services need to ensure they have a clear understanding of the impact of trauma, how to adapt their approach to take account of it and how to promote wellbeing in the people accessing their services.

Homeless Link have developed a Framework for applying TIC which involves 3 key steps.

Step 1: Trauma awareness

There are many psychological impacts of trauma, which affect responses to situations. Ultimately, for someone who has experienced trauma, perceptions of safety and control, the ability to regulate their emotions and capacity for forming relationships may be hugely impacted.

People working within the homelessness sector can also be impacted both from hearing about the trauma of others and by experiences that they may have had in their own lives.

A Day Service that is trauma aware, realises the prevalence of trauma and the impact this will have on the lives of people experiencing homelessness as well as on staff and volunteers.

Step 2: Building safety

Day Services often welcome large numbers of people daily many of whom will be experiencing challenging times such as rough sleeping, substance use and poor health. It is essential to provide a safe environment and yet Day Services can become disrupted and may feel unsafe both physically and psychologically.

Building safety is a key part of being a trauma-informed service. Attention needs to be paid to ensuring that the space is physically safe for both people accessing the service and those working and volunteering there. This can include reviewing the layout to understand entry and exit points as well as any hidden areas where people may feel unsafe. Understanding who is present and how people are admitted may be useful as well as auditing any incidents to better understand any areas for improving safety.

In addition, the Day Services need to provide psychological safety. Trauma survivors often feel unsafe in daily life, whether there is a real or perceived threat.  Building trusting relationships is the foundation for effective support in homelessness services yet trauma survivors are likely to find it difficult to trust people which can lead to challenges in forming connections with others.

Day Service staff and volunteers are often in a good position to build trusting, trauma-informed relationships with people accessing the service. Relationships should be authentic, respectful and have clear boundaries. Consistency is key, for example, not changing workers constantly. Being transparent about your limitations as a worker means that an individual knows what to expect and is not given false hope, which could ultimately reduce trust, and therefore feelings of safety. As workers, being reliable and doing what you say you will do, will avoid re-traumatisation of trauma survivors.

Step 3: (Re)building control

Being trauma-informed involves (re)building control through empowerment and collaboration. Re-gaining a sense of control and empowerment is vital within recovery, and enabling people to identify and build their strengths can help to reinforce a sense of competence, often eroded by trauma. Key to rebuilding control are strengths-based approaches and working in a collaborative way with people accessing services.

Strengths-based approaches

Strengths-based approaches focus on the person’s strengths (what they are good at, their positive social networks and what they would like to achieve), rather than looking at someone’s deficits (such as their ‘problems’ and what is ‘wrong’ in their lives). They also involve encouraging people to make decisions for themselves and develop their capabilities so that they build confidence and are able to move forwards independently.

Adopting a Strengths-based approach is an important part of helping people to re-build control over their lives and move to lives beyond homelessness. It is an approach that fits well with the ethos of many Day Services.

The broader activities that are often by many Day Services provide opportunities for people to explore their strengths and interests. Learning new skills as well as art, music and sport can all help people to build confidence and self-esteem as well as developing aspects of their life beyond homelessness.

Collaboration and Co-production

Collaboration and peer support are also key to taking a trauma-informed approach. For organisations to be trauma-informed, people accessing services need to play an active role in shaping the services and the support they receive. This might be through consultations or feedback groups and by involving peer support in some way.

Co-production means designing and delivering services in a partnership between people accessing services, people with past experience of using services and staff or volunteers. Services work better when they are co-produced because they are more closely matched to what people actually want. Involving people also helps to build self-confidence and can help people to step forwards with their lives.

Running an effective Day Service

The responsibility for ensuring the smooth running of the organisation, including having appropriate governance and developing and updating policies and procedures often falls on one or two people. Feedback from those running Day Services suggests that this can be one of the most challenging aspects of the role.

Connecting to others in similar roles can be a vital resource for sharing information and providing peer support. Homeless Link’s team of Partnership Managers works across each region of England to foster partnerships, bring people together and support strategic development. This includes regional forums for sector leaders.

Homeless Link also provide development and networking opportunities through free Leadership support programmes for established, aspiring and emerging leaders in the sector.

NCVO have useful guides on good charity governance including sample templates for members. The Association for Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) can also be a useful organisation for sharing information.

In addition, Homeless Link’s consultancy team can provide tailored support including undertaking evaluations, service reviews, and creating strategies, to improve its services, embed good practice, and stay strong financially.

Partnership Working

Most Day Services are at the heart of the local response to homelessness and rough sleeping. As such they are key partners for the Local Authority, commissioned outreach teams and housing providers. Creating strong partnerships is one of the most effective ways to work towards ending homelessness locally.

Day Services should and often do attend local multi-agency forums and meetings. This can include operational meetings focused on supporting individual people as well as strategic groups contributing to improving the  local response to homelessness. All meetings should have clear aims and terms of reference to ensure that the right people attend and the meeting achieves intended outcomes. Homeless Link's partnership team have created a self-assessment tool to help assess local partnerships. This can be accessed on the link below.

Multi-agency meetings focus on supporting individuals who may be accessing multiple services. Strengths meetings and Team Around Me take a trauma-informed approach, placing the individual at the heart of their own support. This ensures that people are given opportunities to build control whilst receiving support from different professionals.

In addition to attending external meetings, many Day Services operate as a hub for other providers to access people experiencing homelessness. As a familiar space, some people prefer to access advice and support within the Day Service setting and many services provide one-stop shops for health and drug and alcohol services, housing advice and benefits teams.

Research conducted by Homeless Link in 2017 showed that around 25% of Day Services who responded were operating a hub style model whereby external services regularly attended their building to deliver their services. Bringing services directly where people are can reduce the number of appointments that people need to attend and increase engagement. This can ensure that people experiencing homelessness engage with essential services which can be lifesaving.

Funding and fundraising

48% of Day Services report their main source of income coming from fundraising, grants and philanthropy. This is most commonly through grant funding (20%) and individual giving (16%). Just 23% of providers cite local authority grants or commissions as their main source of income.

Many smaller organisations lack a professional fundraiser and managers may be writing bids in addition to other daily tasks. Homeless Link has developed a series of bite-sized learning videos to help build knowledge and skills around grant fundraising.

Managing Data and Evidencing Impact

Key to funding and fundraising is being able to demonstrate the impact that the service is having. In addition, as Day Services are often at the forefront of the local response to homelessness, they can play a key role in evidencing the local need. This in turn helps to shape the service as well as services in the local area.

You can learn more about how to effectively use data in this toolkit, Measuring your impact.

Many services have a database and record a wide range of information. Much of this is deeply personal and often sensitive information that needs to be collected, stored and used appropriately. It’s important to understand good practice in collecting, storing, using and sharing data for casework purposes as well as the legal and ethical considerations.

Homeless Link has a series of resources on the collection, storage and use of data including a bite-sized learning series on Frontline Data Essentials that covers good practice, ethical considerations and how to use data to demonstrate impact.

An understanding of GDPR is a core requirement. Homeless Link have developed a series of webinars explaining how to comply with the legislation.

Supporting and Managing staff

Research undertaken for Homeless Link in 2017 found that the median number of people accessing Day Services was 400 with a median of 4 FTE staff employed by each service. This can mean that staff are supporting large numbers of people and they may also be working with people in highly complex situations for which they may be no simple resolution.

This places considerable pressure onto staff and volunteers who may also experience vicarious trauma. Moral injury may occur when staff are unable to offer the support they would like due to constraints within the wider system. Moral injury occurs when a person feels they have violated their moral or ethical beliefs or values, or when they are forced to witness or participate in acts that conflict with their sense of right and wrong. People working in the homelessness sector can experience moral injury, particularly when their work exposes them to ethical dilemmas or situations, where their ability to help is constrained. These pressures can lead to burnout, where staff may feel overwhelmed and anxious and can experience symptoms such as insomnia and frustration.

Managers can employ different process and practice to support staff wellbeing and avoid burnout. Regular staff supervision with managers that make time for reflection and wellbeing is essential. Reflective practice gives staff an opportunity to connect with colleagues and process the work that they are doing. Debriefing after an incident can also be critical for ensuring that staff are able to unpack a situation, reflect on what happened, and learn from the experience.