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Coordinated services for women experiencing homelessness

Blog posted by: Lisa Raftery, Tuesday, 11 September 2018.

A National Conference on Women’s Homelessness: Why it’s needed and how you can get involved?

Young homeless woman

This conference aims to bring together the sectors and agencies who have the power to change outcomes for women experiencing homelessness and through their leadership and action can change responses for women who far too often fall through the gaps in provision and are left in a destructive cycle of homelessness and trauma.

Cross-sector multi-agency partnerships and approaches are needed to develop gender-responsive and trauma-informed services for women experiencing homelessness who are also multiply disadvantaged. This conference will showcase the pioneering work happening at local and strategic levels to provide effective cross-sector support and start a national dialogue on what this approach looks like for women experiencing homelessness facing multiple disadvantage.

Coordinated approaches

The Making Every Adult Matter (MEAM) Coalition of Homeless Link, MIND and CLINKS was set up to help local areas design and deliver better-coordinated services for people facing multiple disadvantage and now has 23 local areas adopting this approach across England. In addition, the Big Lottery Fulfilling Lives areas now have 12 supporting local partnerships to develop better services and improve local systems for people facing multiple needs.

MEAM and Fulfilling Lives recently published their research Jumping Through Hoops conducted by AVA, on how these areas are working for women. They make strong recommendations for how coordinated approaches can work better for women by being gendered and trauma-informed, highlighting as key the need to involve women’s services in local partnerships.

Homeless Link has partnered with the Women’s Resource Centre on our research, in recognition of the vital role of women’s services for providing a gendered approach. The findings of our research will be launched at the women’s homelessness conference.  

Our call for workshops

This conference is about partnerships, it is about recognising the range of sectors and services required to work together to support women experiencing homelessness with multiple needs. So we are putting a call out for workshop ideas that demonstrate how this can be done at a service, organisational or strategic level.

If you are supporting women, either in women only or mixed services, or are designing services for women then we want to hear from you. Please complete this proposal form with your ideas and submit to us by Midday on Wednesday 19th September.

The Conference takes place in London on Monday 3th December and we look forward to welcoming you all along with our Associate Partners AGENDAWomen’s Resource CentreMEAM and Women’s Voices to our first National Conference on Women’s Homelessness. For further details and how to book please visit the link above.

If you have any questions about the conference, would like to discuss your workshop proposal before submitting or any questions about the information in this blog please contact Lisa Raftery, London Development Manager at lisa.raftery@homelesslink.org.uk

 

Channel website: http://www.homelesslink.org.uk

Original article link: https://www.homeless.org.uk/connect/blogs/2018/sep/11/coordinated-services-for-women-experiencing-homelessness

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