At Thames Reach, we’re looking for volunteers to help us deliver vital services across London to help end street homelessness. This includes working with our outreach teams to help people off the streets, helping out in local communities to prevent people from becoming homeless, and supporting our Employment and Skills team as they provide job and training opportunities for the people we work with.

If you want to learn new skills, get workplace experience, and make a real difference to the lives of people experiencing homelessness, then come to our volunteer fair.

Hosted by our Volunteering and Employment and Skills teams, this event will offer insight and opportunities for getting started as a Thames Reach volunteer.

Tuesday 1st November 2022
11.00am — 3.00pm
Employment Academy, 29 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UA

To book your place, please visit: Thames Reach Volunteer Fair Tickets, Tue 1 Nov 2022 at 11:00 | Eventbrite

Three projects from across London have been named as winners of the prestigious London Homelessness Awards for 2022.  They will share cash prizes totalling £60,000. The London Homelessness Awards are sponsored by London Housing Foundation, London Housing Directors, The Mayor of London, Crisis and Shelter.

The prize winners are: Greenwich Winter Night Shelter, Pathway Partnership Programme, and our Deptford Reach project, which has won a £10,000 prize at the award ceremony which took place at North London’s Union Chapel on 12 October. The awards were presented by Deputy Mayor Tom Copley.

Jordan McTigue, lead manager at Deptford Reach, says: “Winning this award means so much for both the people we work with, and us as a team, and will be a real boost to the work we are doing in the community. The prize money will go directly towards helping people facing homelessness, allowing us to reach them before they come to the streets. Being able to continue helping people where they are, through food banks, faith hubs and other community spots, is so essential as we start to face the reality of the cost-of-living crisis.”

Margaret Malcolm works with the London Housing Foundation and assessed all of the applicants.  She said: “With a strong field of over 30 applicants, each of these projects did well to get to the last six and are doing excellent work.  The presentations and stories they told were very powerful.   The winners all provide high quality services to a wide range of clients and showcase just how vibrant and innovative the homelessness sector in London continues to be.”

Bill Tidnam, Chief Executive at Thames Reach, said: “We welcome the London Homelessness Award’s recognition of the Deptford Reach community project.  If we are to meet our ambition of ending street homelessness we need many more services like this, which aim to intervene to find people at risk and work with them to help them stay in accommodation.”

Deptford Reach has recently expanded its service from a day centre to community outreach, working with people in Deptford and the surrounding Lewisham community to prevent homelessness, offer advice and guidance and signpost to other services. They do this in hubs across the borough such as food banks and faith centres, after finding that the stigma of homelessness and its surrounding issues mean that people are more likely to engage with support where they are, rather than coming to a day centre. The £10,000 prize will help Deptford Reach to continue this work and reach more people, as we face the additional challenge of the cost-of-living crisis.

Thames Reach welcomes the publication by the DLUHC (Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) today of the new Rough Sleeping Strategy: Ending Rough Sleeping for Good.

The strategy reiterates and expands upon the government’s commitment to ending rough sleeping, and when it cannot, ensuring that it is rare, brief, and non-recurrent.  The adoption of this commitment, developed with the Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI), and charities and local authorities through the Rough Sleeping Advisory panel, moves the objective of ending rough sleeping from a lofty ambition to a practical and measurable goal.

This is accompanied by the commitment of funding over the next three years, building on the settlement following last autumn’s spending review. It will provide the stability necessary for organisations like Thames Reach to develop new and existing services to meet the many challenges set out in the strategy. 

We particularly welcome the investment in the different stages of our work: prevention, involving identifying and supporting people before they end up on the streets; response, working quickly to find people who are sleeping rough and get them to a safe place; and recovery, using accommodation and support models that enable people to move away from street homelessness. Working across prevention, response and recovery is central to Thames Reach’s vision of ending street homelessness, and are practices we know to be effective.

Alongside this, there is a focus on bringing government and services together to make sure that everyone is focused on ending homelessness. We need to make sure that prison is not a route onto the street, that health services work to ensure a health crisis does not lead to homelessness, and crucially that the transition away from local authority care is not the first step in a chain of events that lead to rough sleeping.

half the people on London’s streets are non-UK nationals and we welcome plans to make it much easier to establish people’s status and also to review the approach to accommodating people seeking asylum which can lead to people sleeping rough, particularly in London.

There is much work to be done, but it is crucial that the new administration builds on the lead provided by this strategy and the successful work of the last three years.

The Met Office has now issued a Level 3 Heat Health Alert for London. There is a 90% probability of Heat Health criteria (32°C) being met.

All boroughs in London have been encouraged to trigger their local arrangements for ensuring the health and wellbeing of people sleeping rough during the heatwave.

Outreach teams

Outreach teams are carrying out additional welfare checks, handing out bottled water and sun cream, in addition to assessing the needs of the individual and the standard procedure of helping people come off the streets safely into suitable accommodation.

The Mayor of London has made ‘Cool Spaces’ available to Londoners when temperatures are excessively high. Cool Spaces are areas where Londoners can take respite on hot days. Both Indoor and Outdoor Cool Spaces are available from 1 June to 15 September 2022. You can access an interactive map, which includes water fountains and accessible indoor spaces.

If you see someone sleeping rough, please contact Streetlink who will work with our outreach teams to locate them. Download the app or call 0300 500 0914.

Please be ready to tell Streetlink:
– An exact location of where this person is rough sleeping.You can do this by using a map to pinpoint the exact location and by providing a detailed written description of the location.
– The time that you saw the person sleeping rough at the location.
– Any additional information that will help the local team find the individual sleeping rough (gender, approximate age, what the person looks like, what they are wearing).

If you think someone is in need of urgent care or is in immediate danger, please call 999.

We recently hosted our annual summer event, celebrating the hard work of our volunteers in person at our Employment Academy site. Part of the event was the prizegiving of our Volunteer Awards, presented by Thames Reach Chief Executive, Bill Tidnam, and nominated by the staff who have worked with them. Here are some words from staff nominating their star volunteers, as well as some words from a few of our winners:

Samara won an award for her work in the Rapid Response outreach team. The member of staff who nominated her said:

“I’d like to nominate Samara for a volunteer award. She joined in November and since then she has been committed and reliable. She is really enthusiastic about her role and picks up 2 to 5 shifts every month and workers are really happy to be paired up with her. She shows lots of genuine interest and passion in helping people experiencing homelessness, and has inquired about extra training to improve her skills in supporting people. She has recently had database training which will be very beneficial for the shift so workers can focus on other tasks. She is good with people as well; she is kind and has a natural way of talking to people that makes them feel at ease. She is really good at communicating and is responsive, engaging through messages and e mails.

I think she deserves to win a volunteer award to show her that her work and time are much appreciated.”

Samara said: “The volunteer experience has been amazing. I loved going out to different areas and meeting people from all walks of life. Everyone’s stories and situations are different. I have had the honour to devote my time to such an amazing organisation which does so much for the community and helps people experiencing homelessness. I decided to volunteer with Thames Reach because I believe in their vision to end homelessness, and their vision aligns with my vision, and my vision is that everyone deserves a place they can call home. Not only that, but I hope to inspire the next generation to give back to the community and to help anyone that’s in need.”

Martin has been volunteering with outreach. His nominating member of staff said: “Martin has been working tirelessly since before lockdown and all through the lockdown period. He is reliable and always on time; he gives up his free time to cover 1 or sometimes 2 shifts a week and volunteers during street counts without fail. He shares his extensive knowledge of the various hidden areas of the City of London due to working in the City for many years, which has helped me & the team immensely. He has endless energy!”

Martin said: “It is truly humbling and inspirational to be able to accompany and support the Thames Reach outreach teams on shifts and see the amazing dedication, professionalism and empathetic compassion they all demonstrate when engaging with people experiencing street homelessness or those with insecure accommodation. Each individual referral is always treated with great respect and sympathetic patience, despite sometimes initial recalcitrance, and as a result one can quickly see genuine improvements in both existing clients’ & new referrals’ health and life chances. The team’s commitment through the challenges of Covid was extraordinary and clearly reflected in the encouraging decline in street count numbers; but even for those now settled in secure accommodation thanks to the team’s efforts, knowing that they can still call on their support must be a continuing great comfort and undoubtedly critical in preventing a return to the streets.”

Kelly was nominated for her work with the Croydon Housing First team. “She has worked really well with her peers, support workers and the people we work with. She has a calm and gentle persona that has helped her gain the trust of the people she works with but has also shown a great level of empathy and insight into different people’s needs and challenges they are faced with. She has co-mentored one person with her peer, and alongside him has enabled someone with multiple complex needs to feel more settled in their home. This has not only prevented them from abandoning their property, but also helped them to start feeling less isolated, take pride in their appearance and that of their flat, which she is working to make more homely. Kelly is passionate and dedicated to her learning, volunteering to shadow different teams and workers as well as dedicating her time to further training and development.”

Well done to all winners, and a huge thank you to everyone who volunteers with us. You are a vital part of our work ending street homelessness!

Three projects from across London have been named as winners of the prestigious London Homelessness Awards for 2022.  They will share cash prizes totalling £60,000.

The London Homelessness Awards are sponsored by London Housing Foundation, London Housing Directors, The Mayor of London, Crisis and Shelter.

We received over 30 applications for the awards and after visiting the six shortlisted projects and seeing their presentations, the judges have decided on the three top prize winners, with three other projects specially commended.

The prize winners are (in alphabetical order):

– Greenwich Winter Night Shelter

– Pathway Partnership Programme

– Thames Reach, Deptford Reach

Three further projects were particularly commended as making a special contribution to helping combat homelessness in London:

– Camden Adult Pathway Partnership (CAPP) team

– Providence Row Outreach Psychotherapy

– Riverside Street Buddies

The allocation of the prize money (first prize, £30,000, second, £20,000 and third £10,000), will be revealed at a special event at the Union Chapel on 12^th October, presented by Deputy Mayor Tom Copley.

Margaret Malcolm works with the London Housing Foundation and assessed all of the applicants.  She said: “With a strong field of over 30 applicants, each of these projects did well to get to the last six and are doing excellent work.  The presentations and stories they told were very powerful.   The winners all provide high quality services to a wide range of clients and showcase just how vibrant and innovative the homelessness sector in London continues to be.”

Bill Tidnam, Chief Executive at Thames Reach, said: “We welcome the London Homelessness Award’s recognition of the Deptford Reach community project.  If we are to meet our ambition of ending street homelessness we need many more services like this, which aim to intervene to find people at risk and work with them to help them stay in accommodation.”

The three winning projects (in alphabetical order) are:

– Greenwich Winter Night Shelter: A local charity which provides emergency accommodation and support for the homeless in Greenwich. Last year, they moved away from the traditional rotating night shelter to set up a static venue. With support from over 200 volunteers, GWNS now provides single-room accommodation for nine individuals (including a women’s-only wing), 1:1 casework and advocacy, and a pet friendly drop-in day centre where anyone who is homeless or vulnerably housed can access support and faciltiies. All services have been designed by guests through focus groups to work towards breaking the cycle of homelessness.

– Pathway: Since April 2021 five London hospitals (St Georges, Croydon, St Mary’s/Imperial, the Homerton and Ealing/Northwick Park) have introduced Pathway’s model of care for homeless patients and have signed up to Pathway’s Partnership support programme. The model is based on work pioneered at UCLH in 2009. In return for an annual fee, each team receives support and training from Pathway’s core staff, access to their on-line service manual and specialist support networks.

– Thames Reach: Thames Reach’s Deptford Reach service provides advice and support to people in the community at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness, working to resolve and signpost issues such as claiming benefits, employment, mental and physical health needs and unsuitable accommodation. Deptford Reach has always had a strong reputation for casework advice that helps prevent and resolve homelessness.  An enforced temporary closure due to the first lockdown, followed by a review of the service, allowed Deptford Reach to adapt to prevent homelessness more effectively. Having existed as a day centre for many years, stigmas around homelessness have meant that there is a demand for people to access support in different locations. The team now works in seven spaces across Lewisham. As a result, Deptford Reach now works with a wider range of people, offering drop-in crisis and brief intervention work, with a capacity to resolve complex needs that prevent the loss of accommodation.

details about the London Homelessness Awards can be found at www.lhawards.org.uk

-Ends-

Notes to editors

Thames Reach is a charity based in London, supporting people facing homelessness through prevention, intervention, and recovery. The charity specialises in helping people with complex and multiple needs, including mental health and drug and alcohol use. It manages a range of services, including street outreach, frontline hostels, day services, specialist supported housing and employment and skills schemes. Thames Reach’s mission is to assist homeless and vulnerable adults to find decent homes, build supportive relationships and lead fulfilling lives. thamesreach.org.uk

For more information, please contact:

Thames Reach Communications team:

media@thamesreach.org.uk