Innovation in Social Integration: Social Enterprise, Social Integration and Education Services for Homeless People, Lessons from the UK

9th European Research Conference
Homelessness in Times of Crisis
Warsaw, Friday 19th September 2014
Innovation in Social Integration Social Integration for homeless people, lessons from Britain
Joanne Bretherton
Nicholas Pleace
Centre for Housing Policy

Introduction
The British context and development of services focused on social integration.
The research
Time Banking
Crisis Skylight
Conclusions

The British Context
Successes in housing sustainment
But concerns that economic and social marginalisation persists beyond homelessness
Policy agendas to end poverty and marginalisation through paid work
Welfare reforms
Emphasis on ending poverty through paid work

Key Aspects
Humanitarian
Stigmatisation
Social support
Economic inclusion
Practical
Health and well-being
Housing sustainment
Political
Social cohesion
Cost benefits

The Research
Three and half year longitudinal action research project on the Broadway Time Banking scheme across London.
Longitudinal evaluation of the Crisis Skylight programme, tracking 135 people over three years across six sites in London, Oxford, Newcastle, Merseyside, Birmingham and Edinburgh.
Mixed methods research.

Time Banking: The Model
 Community-led innovation using time as
currency.
 Reciprocal service exchange. One hour of
time given earns an hour of time credit to
use on something else. Credits could be
‘banked’ and used later.
 An hour’s worth of a person’s labour =
 a ‘Time Dollar’ in the US and
 a ‘Time Credit’ in Britain
 Began in Japan in the 1950’s and later
developed in the US. Now present in over
forty countries across six continents.
 Using often untapped skills, ranging from
manual work to gardening, hairdressing or
language teaching. Any ‘skill’ can be utilised.
 Time Banks can value work which is
normally unrewarded and value
contributions from people marginalised from
the conventional economy.

Time Banking: Core Principles
At the heart of Time Banking lies the ethos of:
Recognising, drawing upon and rewarding people’s full potential to enhance communities and organisations.
Redefining work by creating a currency that pays people for helping each other and creating a better place in which to live.
Using mutual exchange to improve relationships and trust with others.
Increasing social capital through participation in community networks to give more meaning to people’s lives.

Time Banking for homeless people
Considerable research demonstrated difficulties for homeless people accessing education, training and employment.
Lack of accommodation / no permanent address
Lack of certainty / security
Low confidence and self-esteem
Low educational attainment, training and or experience
Poor knowledge and access to employment opportunities
Employer attitudes
Complex needs that require support – difficulty in structuring time, interpersonal skills.
Time Banks however focus on skills and potential rather than deficits or support needs only.

Time Banking for homeless people
Time Banks can address the needs of homeless people.
A lack of empirical evidence on potential benefits of Time Banking but some research suggests it can increase self esteem, develop (sometimes unknown) skills and increase networks and community involvement.
Been used in a variety of settings including services for young and older people, housing and criminal justice. Often attracting socially excluded groups who would not usually participate in traditional volunteering.
Gives responsibility to those that have previously been considered or made to feel that they are ‘the problem’.
Time Banks strive to make people feel useful in utilising whatever skill or service they can offer.
These skills can be fine-tuned and even lead to employment or self- employment.

Time Banking at Broadway
Started operating in 2010 and was the first attempt to bring Time Banking to the homelessness sector.
It addressed the policy imperative in Britain to secure access to paid work for homeless people and received high level interest from central Government.
Its aims were to increase:
employability though skills development, work experience and increased confidence and self-esteem;
economic independence by supporting participants into employment or self- employment;
positive involvement in the local community through Time Bank activity.
Nick Clegg (Deputy Prime Minister) and Ian Duncan Smith (Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) at the Broadway Time Bank at the start of the research in 2010.

Time Banking at Broadway: Demographics
Other
Asian British
Mixed
Black British
White
2
10
28
89
175
0
4
11
35
58
Time Bankers
Men
Women

Time Banking Activity
Over 400 Time Banking clients logged in 2010-2013.
Eighty-eight DIFFERENT types of activity undertaken ranging from working on reception as part of a work and learning activity, through to gardening, cooking, IT training or arts-based activities.
From available data: 2,334 Time Banking activities were recorded and 6,619 hours spent.
Time Banking had flexibility and could be used to facilitate bespoke activities for individual Broadway clients, enabling lone individuals to use their time credits or offer their time in areas as diverse as poetry, learning Spanish, or teaching others how to play chess.

Time Banking Activity

Outcomes of Time Banking
Clear evidence that Time Banking had successfully engaged with homeless people who were distant from formal work and learning.
Engagement with positive, meaningful activity, up to and including formal education, training, volunteering or work placements that could, in some cases, lead directly to paid work.
These people were exposed to opportunities that helped them back towards social and economic inclusion.
Time Banking is unique by rewarding people with credits that could be spent later. Tangible benefits.

Outcomes of Time Banking
Structure and Meaningful Activity:
It gives me purpose…It normalises your life. (Client, Year 2)
This gave me some structure and reason to get out of bed in the morning. (Client, Year 2)
Boredom and Isolation:
I didn’t particularly go into it thinking ‘oh I’ll get something out of this’, I did
it because I needed to use my time usefully ‘cos I had problems with addictions
and stuff like that… (Client, Year 3)
Self Confidence:
One lady who never comes out of her room as she’s quite vulnerable, always comes to the art group. You can’t get more positive than that. (Client, Year 2)
I think that it does make people…stop and realise that you do have skills to offer and that by exercising them you can develop them into something else…I think it makes
you realise that you are employable. (Client, Year 3)

Employment & Training Outcomes 2012/13

Wider Outcomes of Time Banking
Wider social cohesion
Engagement with professionals, businesses and other Time Banks
It makes people feel good, it makes people feel really good about giving something back, I think that’s the most important thing. People are engaged in their community, they are donating their time for other people, that’s very important. And such a huge thing for someone who has spent so long being ostracised and isolated from mainstream society, its huge, that does really feed self-confidence, that they can be part of mainstream society… (Stakeholder, Year 2)

Time Banking: Limits
Lack of engagement
Not a universal success
Problems with Information
Some felt that they did not really understand what Time Banking was or what activities were available to them.
Difficulties in spending accrued credits
Lack of suitable options to spend their ‘earned’ Time credits
Activities too far away
Concerns about exploitation

Replication
From the outset in 2010 Broadway sought to develop a Time Bank for homeless people that could be replicated across other homelessness services.
Key strength of Broadway’s approach was the success in engaging a large number of people with diverse needs. Flexibility of the model was a key component.
At the point of completing the research, Broadway had a dedicated member of staff providing support and advice to agencies who were interested in developing a Time Bank for homeless people.

Skylight: The Model
Designed specifically to advance the social integration of homeless people referred to as ‘progression’ towards ‘transformed’ lives
Arts-based activities
Performance (music, theatre, opera, dance)
Creative (writing, poetry, drawing, painting, textiles, ceramics)
Accredited learning, basic skills
Computing
English
Maths
Smartskills tutors, work and learning coaches

Crisis Skylight: The Model
Support with job seeking
Preparation of CV / résumé
Help with job searching
Individual support from work and learning and employment workers
Self employment support
Skylight cafes – social enterprises offering training (3 sites)
Support with practical needs
Progression coaches and/or work and learning coaches
Mental Health Coordinators (not all services in 2012/13)
Housing Coaches (not all services in 2012/13)

Changing lives grants
Up to £3,000 (15,797 PLN, €3,775, $4,877)
To support moving into self-employment
For further and advanced education

Crisis Skylight: Philosophy
Personalisation or client-led approach
Workers and currently and formerly homeless people work jointly to move towards a set of goals the homeless person determines
Very different from British Government “Get any job now or face severe welfare sanctions” policy – The Work Programme - although that policy has been moderated in relation to long-term homeless people, to allow them more time

Crisis Skylight Delivery
Can be building based, with dedicated classrooms, spaces for performance and art, London, Oxford, Newcastle
Or Outreach, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Merseyside (Liverpool), services are taken into shelters, hostels, supported single site communal/congregate housing and daycentres

Crisis Skylight

Activity 2012/13
10,256 people, either homeless, formerly homeless or at risk used Skylight services
37% of activity in London
33% women
Ethnic diversity greatest in London
25% No educational qualifications
60% homeless at first contact
30% history of mental health problems
27% history of problematic drug/alcohol use

Activity 2012/13

Contacts
Type of activity One session Two to four sessions Five or more sessions Total Education, training and job seeking 39% 33% 28% 100% Arts based activities 38% 37% 26% 100% Health and well being 43% 35% 22% 100% Participation and involvement 89% 9% 3% 100% Other 40% 42% 18% 100% All activities 42% 33% 25% 100%

Outcomes 2012/13
Skylight Area of Improvement Housing Mental health Took up external education/ training Got paid work Volunteered Exam passes and certifications All positive outcomes Edinburgh 20 0 5 30 12 41 108 Birmingham 26 8 267 105 90 893 1,341 London 379 113 507 439 315 1,410 3,163 Merseyside 23 1 119 65 77 175 460 Newcastle 115 41 113 98 51 1,038 1,456 Oxford 117 75 180 115 158 347 992 All Skylights 680 238 1,191 852 703 3,904 7,520

Direction and meaning
Crisis have been fantastic in my life. I probably could not have done it without them because I probably would have wasted another year feeling sorry for myself, thinking I wasn’t going to get into college.
It is something to do as well. Something to get up out of bed in the morning for. Look forward too. Instead of just lazing about, oh I’ll go to the pub, have a couple of beers kind of thing, you come in here, you learn something…I can brush up on me maths skills, there’s plenty of computer qualifications I can get.

Understanding and respect
I like the way they don’t treat you like a little kid or something, they treat you like an adult. And you can have like a decent conversation. They don’t treat you any different. Like some people treat people who’ve been like homeless, like different, they look down and Crisis don’t.
They are so respectful. They are not condescending, I find that irritating and they are not. They are real. They’ve all got a lot of life experience, but they’re very professional with it. They’re great. They’re friendly as well, but the boundaries are set. Can’t fault them.

‘Progression’ and ‘transformation’
I can’t praise them enough, what they’ve done for me…they’ve made me feel different, made me more confident in myself, they brought me out of my shell, like I say before I was a recluse I wouldn’t speak to no- one, but they gave me confidence to do things.
I suppose I’ve had a voice. When you’ve been homeless and addicted and things like that, you sort of lose your voice. And, I believe Crisis has given me that voice back to feel like I’m worthy, I’m not just a ‘homeless drug addict’, you know ‘cos that is what a lot of people label me as, I’m actually a person in my own right.

Crisis Skylight: Limits
Attrition after initial contacts is significant
Progress can be slow
Economic environment and negative attitudes of some employers remain
Are limits in how far some can progress towards paid work
Year one results, more to come

Conclusions
Both studies indicate that personalisation (client-led), respectful, flexible services can deliver social integration
Potentially fractures some assumptions about the nature of single or lone homelessness. Homeless people actively pursue a normal life when given choice and resources to do so, they do not always need to be “re-programmed” to be “non-homeless” in behaviour or outlook.
Important not to confuse what homelessness can do to someone’s self-esteem, social supports and social integration with that person’s character or what they want from life.
A caveat is that not all actually engaged with these services.

Conclusions
Humanitarian
Clear evidence of increased self-esteem
Sense of purpose, direction and potential regained or reasserted
Reduction in sense of stigmatisation
Practical
Reductions in known risks associated with homelessness
Gains in health and well-being
Education, Training, Employment, self employment
Political
Delivering social integration, increased economic activity and general social cohesion, reductions in welfare spending

Conclusions
These services represent progress in increasing social integration of homeless people.
People had moved into paid work, set up their own businesses, engaged in training, volunteering and further education.
But there are limits, homeless people did not always engage with Skylight for long, issues with spending Time Credits for Time Banking.
Individual needs, characteristics and experiences may take some time to overcome and for some, at least, eventual progress may fall short of paid work.
But there is still evidence of generally beneficial effects around esteem, activity and sense of purpose.

Reports
www.york.ac.uk/chp/

Thanks for Listening
Joanne.Bretherton@york.ac.uk
Nicholas.Pleace@york.ac.uk
www.york.ac.uk/chp/
www.womenshomelessness.org

Innovation in Social Integration: Social Enterprise, Social Integration and Education Services for Homeless People, Lessons from the UK

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