Breaking the cycle: how we work to help people leave homelessness behind
23 January 2025
Thames Reach Chief Executive, Bill Tidnam, explains how trust and tailored support help people set their path to independence

At Thames Reach, we work to prevent street homelessness, support people sleeping rough, and help them move away from homelessness for good. In the last piece, we showed how accommodation—whether hostels, supported housing, or settled housing— and the way that these are (or are not) provided can either help people to move away from homelessness for good, or actually reinforce the damage that is caused by life on the streets. We also noted that for many people, particularly those with needs associated with their mental health or drug or alcohol use, moving away from the streets is not just about providing housing.
The nature of life on the streets is that it is chaotic. You may find it difficult to follow through a straightforward programme of treatment, increasing the likelihood of a health crisis that requires you to use A&E. Services may struggle to communicate with you to tell you that you need to come in for an appointment, and it becomes even more difficult if that appointment is at the same time as an appointment with the job centre to sort out your benefits so that you can get into accommodation. More difficult still if you can’t read well and don’t have access to the internet to rebook appointments. Or if you finally have got an offer of accommodation but need to get furniture and arrange utility connections, and fend off a landlord who wants the rent when you are waiting for a benefits claim to be agreed. All of this while moving into a new area and trying to transfer your treatment to a new GP and perhaps a new Community Mental Health Team.
Each of these problems is practical and solvable, but togetherr—and combined with the justified belief based on past experiences that things often go wrong— they can become overwhelming.
What is support?
The role of our staff is first to build trust, by doing what we say and sometimes by making quite a small difference, then starting to help to fill the gaps and join together all these elements into something that makes sense and helps rather than overwhelms. Through this, we try to help the people we support overcome their distrust and fear and begin to take control of their lives and move away from homelessness for good.
By working across boundaries and helping people navigate complex and intimidating systems, we can break the spirals of rejection and disengagement that keep people homeless.
An obvious example of this work is done by our street outreach services. While we provide outreach work across most of London, Thames Reach is commissioned by ten local authorities across London to work with people who are sleeping on the streets. The role of our outreach services is to find people who are sleeping on the streets and to help them into accommodation. Much of this work involves people whose route off the streets is not straightforward. There is often no suitable accommodation immediately available, and our staff need to build trust while asking people to wait and being honest about the options that are, and are not, available.
This model of work continues in our emergency accommodation. The best way to describe this accommodation is a sort of hospital ward – a place where people can be linked with the help they need, such as health services, substance misuse treatment, housing, and benefits.Like a hospital ward, however, this is not a place for long-term stays. The role of our support staff in these services is, again, to build trust, challenge, and help people get the help they need to move on.
Moving on can itself be a difficult time. Often moving out of hostels and supported housing is a difficult step. You have your independence, and your own front door, but you can also be confronted with many of the issues you faced before you ended up homeless. Without help to bridge the gap, this can mean that this positive move to independence is a risky time.
The support we provide during this transition — helping to resolve benefit issues that could lead to eviction, addressing challenges such as exploitative ‘friends’ taking over your flat, or finding and keeping work—can mean the difference between building the confidence to manage independently and returning to the streets.
These are just some examples of the work of our support staff, but what they have in common is a focus on building trust, linking services together, and putting the people we support and their recovery at the centre of what we do. By working across boundaries and helping people navigate complex and intimidating systems, we can break the spirals of rejection and disengagement that keep people homeless.