End of Year Reflections
As we rapidly head towards the end of the year I have been reflecting on the challenges and successes of 2022. Just as we did entering 2021, we hoped that that 2022 could only be better than the year before. But we all know what a challenging year it’s been, with the war in Ukraine, incredible political instability, the cost of living crisis and now seemingly endless strikes. These challenges have flowed though to our sector and our work of course, and it has not been the smoothest of years to say the least.
Part of our role and indeed our mission, is about building hope. Despite all these challenges we have continued to build hope for our residents, and we need to keep focussed on this. We need to continue to build hope for ourselves too, remembering what we are achieving in the service of people who desperately need our help. Here’s just some examples from this year that I think we can all be very proud of:
- We have supported more people experiencing homelessness than ever before, and more people in real crisis with high needs.
- We have continued to be able to support a high number of people with no recourse to public funds, who without our help would be completely roofless and destitute.
- We have increased the number of vulnerable women we are able to support, and we are beginning to develop a team with very specialist skills in supporting them.
- We have helped many of our residents to move into and sustain employment.
- We’ve opened our innovative new Hope Street service for rough sleepers moving on from the streets and short term services.
- Almost 9 out of 10 of our former residents sustain their accommodation for at least 9 months.
- We have won a number of awards recognising the quality of our work in resident employment and training, our Covid-19 vaccination provision, for our Hope Street service and for our leadership.
- We’ve also been awarded the Good Work Standard award for our employment practices.
- We have diversified our Board membership and skills.
- We’ve brought in new funding to develop our work with women, with community engagement, and in employability, to name just a few.
- We’ve continued to improve the environments we operate from so that our residents can be safe and feel proud of the place they call home.
- We have made a cracking start on our environmental sustainability work with the inception of our Green Project.
- We’ve continued our work on equality, diversity and inclusion through our Belonging Committee, recently launching our new Belonging Framework.
- And on top of all of this we’ve recognised our evolution as a charity and we have successfully rebranded to become Your Place, focussing on solving homelessness one person at a time.
Thank you to my team for their tireless work and ongoing accomplishments right across the organisation this past year. I am very proud to be part of the Your Place team and I am looking forward to continuing to work together to push our work forward and ensure that we are achieving our mission, and of course rising to the challenges that we know 2023 will bring.
Amanda Dubarry
