New report shows how services are benefitting single homeless people
Posted on 25 January 2016
Joanne Bretherton and Nicholas Pleace have written an interim report for the charity Crisis about their Skylight service focussing on initerviews with participants in three building-based Skylight services in London, Newcastle and Oxford and three outreach-based services in Birmingham, Edinburgh and Merseyside.
Crisis Skylight is a service for single homeless people that focuses on promoting health and well-being, housing stability, social support and employment. One-to-one support in Skylight focuses on a process of progression, designed to positively transform the social and economic position of single homeless people. Skylight also offers arts-based activities, basic skills education, training,
volunteering, support with health and well-being, support in seeking work and assistance in finding and sustaining housing.
In interviews, a majority of cohort members reported that they had progressed towards paid work and also a better quality of life as a direct result of their contact with Skylight.
- Twenty-two per cent reported securing paid work as a result of working with Skylight
- 13% had moved into further education, training or higher education.
- Overall, 88% of the cohort members reported having made at least some progress in their lives, directly resulting from working with Skylights.
In interviews, members compared Skylight very positively with the other services they had used, with the skill and understanding of Skylight staff and the quality of services being frequently praised.
The challenges to the service are that some people will experience punctuated forms of progression, with backwards as well as forward steps, creating a need for ongoing support on at least an intermittent basis for some members.
Read more in the summary and full report available here: Report (PDF 
, 587kb)