West Midlands Mayor Andy Street visits City homeless hostel to discuss projects preventing rough sleeping

Staff at a homeless hostel in Birmingham city centre welcomed West Midlands’ Mayor Andy Street today, Wednesday 19 December 2018, to discuss initiatives that are helping towards tackling the city’s rough sleeping.

Washington Court, a 101 bed homeless hostel run by Trident Group’s care and support charity Trident Reach, hosted the Mayor on a day where staff and customers were celebrating with an annual Christmas meal. The team took the opportunity to share with the Mayor an insight into a number of projects at the hostel that are helping with supporting the city’s homeless community.

With a team of over a hundred staff, Trident Reach’s specialist Homeless Services team have recently launched a number of initiatives which are helping to support people into looking at the underlying issues that render them vulnerable to homelessness.

Accompanied by Frances Mapstone, Minister of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s Rough Sleeping Initiative Adviser, Mr Street learned more about the hostel’s Cold Weather Provision, a nightly service to house homeless people in the Winter months, Couples Provision and also its Pre-Immediate Access project which launched in September this year that allows staff to deliver a ‘light touch’ support service, focusing on harm reduction.

Whilst speaking with customers at the hostel, Andy said: “The work done by Trident Group in working with rough sleepers is a great example of how the region is pulling together to tackle this issue. During the winter months when temperatures drop, the hostel’s response is vital to efforts to get everybody into safe accommodation.”

Executive Lead for Housing, Care and Support at Trident Group, Helen Litherland, said: “We’re proud to welcome Mayor Andy Street to Washington Court and to showcase the vital work our staff team are doing across the City. Tackling rough sleeping in the City can be a challenge however with the intervention our services and many others are doing across the region, every bit of it helps towards ending the cycle of homelessness and it occurring in the first place”