4 of 13 Delivery to the Lowest Common Denominator

“Before I became homeless, I worked as an accountant. Now I have to prove I can write my own budget plan. It’s humiliating. Is this really how low I’ve fallen?”

The norm has been for skill development courses and tenancy support training to be a requirement for people to complete in order to prove their ability to look after themselves and move out of homelessness. The evidence from what people told us, was that in reality, the only real benefit to them was the short term social interaction rather than any long term sustained improvement.

Low course attendance and strategies for engagement have been high on the agenda for many years. People told us that they didn’t engage because they felt awkward, uncomfortable about what they may have to talk about, feared bumping into people they owed money to or saw the groups as patronizing. One guy said he was booked onto a vocational course which was great, but no one had asked about his educational history… he had two degrees and was easily more qualified than the person delivering the session.

We took action

We stopped running internal courses and replaced them with brokered, community-based opportunities and resources tailored to the individual.

The PTS gives individuals the control to identify their own goals or barriers and how they want to tackle them.