Over the last year, Homeless Link’s National Practice Development (NPD) team have focussed on a range of areas including:
- Housing First England
- Women’s Homelessness
- Youth Homelessness
- Health Conversations
- Strengths Based Practice
- Suicide Prevention
In addition to the above, Homeless Link’s NPD & Members Services teams alongside Shelter have been commissioned by DLUHC to deliver a new 3-year programme which aims to build the capacity, skills, and knowledge of frontline staff and volunteers in England. This blog will summarise some of the resources we’ve delivered for the sector over the last year.
Our work has included a leadership programme, webinars, training, communities of practice, written resources, and a podcast series. We have responded to emerging challenges, listened to what the sector needs and held focus groups to shape our work, all with the goal of aiding staff and volunteers to support people experiencing homelessness.
Across this first year, we have produced resources & learning/training activities that improve knowledge and understanding of:
- Safeguarding practice like our bitesize online learning packages and youth safeguarding webinar
- Planning for winter provision such as our webinar and SWEP guidance
- Benefits like our guidance on mental health & PIP, Universal Credit easements and couples & benefit claims.
- Wellbeing such as our podcast series which discusses how working in the homelessness sector can impact on individual’s mental health, suggesting ways frontline staff can look after themselves.
- Health & Homelessness like our webinar, health case studies, and Covid-19 general resources & guidance
- Supporting people with uncertain or restricted eligibility such as our guidance
- Involving & recruiting people with lived experience like our Community of Practice series and briefing document.
As we move forward into the next year of the programme, we have used intelligence from our members to identify the following 4 key areas of focus:
- Rough Sleeping Interventions
- Trauma-Informed Practice
- Hot and Cold Severe Weather
- Equalities, Diversity & Inclusion
Under each of these themes will come multiple resources, communities of practice, training opportunities, webinars and podcast series. Keep a look out for new resources on our Knowledge Hub and check out upcoming events and training on our website.
Shelter delivers the NHAS training programme which offers free ‘live’ ninety-minute webinars as well as short pre-records and bitesize eLearning courses: make sure you sign up to the NHAS mailing list to hear about their training and resources available.