Streetlife Mobilises Homeless Community Over Cuts to Services

From James Mclean:

Street Life Newsletter:

On Wednesday, the homeless community decided to stand up and speak out.  We would like to start by thanking everybody that attended and those that were there in spirit also.  We would also like to thank all the staff at Inclusion Healthcare (Charles Berry House) both for their hard work and the use of an excellent conference centre.  We would also like to thank Tony Evan’s for arranging the whole day, without him and this facility today we would not have had a voice.

Just in case no one is aware, which I am sure a lot of people are not. The national government must cut their budgets.  The cuts are coming from some of the most vital services in this city.  It’s the homeless services  that you and me use.  So today we all met at Inclusion Healthcare and discussed what is happening in the not too distant future.

At present there is a consultation going on within  Leicester City Council on  their new homeless strategy.  They call it a strategy, we call it an erosion of the lifeline many homeless people, rough sleepers, the vulnerably housed and disadvantaged have. Sometimes the only lifeline we have.

This consultation is due to come to an end on February 18th. The proposals in this consultation are as follows:  Stopping funding for the Young Advisory Service and Centre, 

Upper Titchbourne, Lower Hastings and Lougborough Road Hostel, replacing these with private tenancy landlord provisions, a more targeted approach to an individual’s needs and a homeless hotline for members of the public to report rough sleepers, so that the council can dispatch someone to deal with this.  Oh and no replacement for the YASC service.

At present they have already cut the amount of staff or the hours of work at these and other services directed  at homeless people . This is the reason that YASC  is now only open from 8.00am until 1pm until 4pm.

In theory this sounds good, but theory is not practice.  We had a  wide range of different people from across the homeless community both workers and users of services.  We also had the BBC come as well.  As the day streamed on. It dawned on all of us talking about the problems is all well and good but what we needed was action.

So, we decided to talk about how we could  challenge these proposals. As this was approaching our allotted time we decided to call it a day and resolved to hold working groups to combat these proposed proposals.  We will be holding working groups in YASC every afternoon from 1pm – 4pm.  For more information contact Andy or James.

Leicester City Councils Homelessness Review Survey

Along with producing a 200+ page homelessness review. Which WILL affect you as either a service user or provider. The council have also produced an eleven page survey. The intention of this second document appears to be to ask service users, providers?  within the homelessness system  i.e. YASC (Dawn Centre) Hostels, Day Centres, Out Reach, how they feel about the councils proposed (imminent?)  to the service provisions.

Your Choice

If people choose not to fill in this document the council will be able to make any decisions that they please and still be able to claim that they consulted the service users/providers?

If people choose not to complete this document sadly the council will be right. The council will be able to make decisions as it pleases and service users will have to accept the changes.

Your Voice

So if you want your opinions voiced then you need a copy of LEICESTER CITY COUNCIL’s review survey 2012/13

available at the Dawn Centre. The survey closes on the 18th of February 2013.

This means that it must be complete and sent off by the 15^th of February.

James will be available to assist anyone who might need help filling it in.

Petition Raised

A petition has been raised about the upcoming changes to homelessness services, can be signed at the Dawn Centre and will be doing the rounds the rounds of the drop-ins.

Blank copies will be available at the Dawn Centre to take away and have other complete.

New Drop-in

From Sunday 13/1/13 there will be a new afternoon drop in up at Open Hands (Tichborne Street) 4.00pm till 6.00ish

From this Sunday this drop in will start running once a fortnight. Grahame who will be running it assures all who come a warm welcome and offers all comers a chance to relax in good company with a cup of tea and biscuits.

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