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Resilience has never been more important.

Twelve homelessness sector organisations are taking part in the "Responding to the Resilience Risk 2 Programme", funded by the City Bridge Trust and Oak Foundation, and launching this week.

Responding to the Resilience Risk 2 is a programme of activities designed to improve individual and team resilience among frontline workers in the homelessness sector. It seeks to enable improvement in frontline staff members’ understanding and use of resilience tools in their day-to-day work. It is delivered through group training and individual coaching.  

Development of the project has been led by City Bridge Trust, who are also funding the project alongside Oak Foundation, with Guildhall Coaching Associates creating new content for the programme activities. Homeless Link have recruited twelve organisations to take part in the programme and will be working to support participants throughout. 

Leading academic and Coach, Dr. Carole Pemberton, defines resilience as: 

“The capacity to remain flexible in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours when faced by a life disruption, or extended periods of pressure, so that we emerge from difficulty stronger, wiser and more able.” 

Rick Henderson, CEO of Homeless Link writes:

“We are excited to be able to be part of this important work. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen the immense achievements, innovation and creativity of the homelessness sector, rising to the challenge of delivering ‘Everyone In’, but our members have also reported to us the strain of increased workload and adaptations to ways of working, affecting individual and team resilience. Frontline workers in the homelessness sector are often working with people with complex needs, putting staff at risk of burn out, stress and poor work/life balance.  

“The need now is to build forward, supporting a robust homelessness sector for the future, echoing Pemberton’s words, we are seeking to emerge from difficulty stronger, wiser and more able.“

The programme is being rigorously evaluated, and at its core is a research piece, with this element of the work led by Renaisi. This represents a huge opportunity for homelessness organisations and members of Homeless Link, who are taking part in research and activities that will improve resilience for frontline workers and create a body of learning that could influence the funding landscape.  

The research is scheduled to be published in the Autumn of 2022. It will be of particular interest to funders and other voluntary sector organisations as it seeks to address issues of staff resilience, retention, progression, and organisational stability.  

Each of the twelve organisations working in the homelessness sector have been selected to take part and provided with £25,000 of funding to enable participation. A total of 96 people are participating and will take part in group resilience sessions as well as one to one coaching. 

The organisations are:

Peter Bedford Housing Association
Barons Court Project
Kingston CAH
Providence Row
Change Please Foundation
Spitalfields Crypt Trust
Emmaus SLC
Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network
Stonewall Housing Association
HOPE Worldwide
NEWway Project
Glass Door

 

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

Original article link: https://www.homeless.org.uk/connect/news/2021/nov/04/resilience-has-never-been-more-important

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