The Welcome Organisation
Greater Belfast homelessness charity, the Welcome Organisation (TWO), has been awarded a Homewards Fund grant to pilot a Women’s Hub Navigator role. The role aims to improve outcomes for single women experiencing multiple exclusion or chronic homelessness, by taking a trauma-informed approach to multi-agency support.
Core activities include developing a real-time dashboard to proactively manage support needs, coordinating trauma-informed training for approximately 25-30 staff across partner organisations, building clearer referral pathways and protocols with the Department of Health in relation to mental, physical and addiction inequalities, Department of Justice, and across the Homelessness and Housing Sector, including supporting women transitioning from homelessness into tenancy.
Partnership is at the heart of this work. The Women’s Hub already brings together TWO, Simon Community NI, Depaul, Complex Lives, the NI Housing Executive, and Department of Health, who will serve as the Steering Group for the project.
The project is directly linked to activity within the Homewards Northern Ireland Action Plan.
“The funding award from Homewards will be used to establish a Women’s Hub Navigator role within Greater Belfast. The project brings together key partners to create innovative and more sustainable ways of working to address the recurrent issues which impact on the growing number of women in need of gender-specific, trauma informed support.
The initiative will demonstrate how a trauma informed, holistic, cross-agency partnership approach will improve the outcomes for women who are vulnerable to chronic homelessness, often dealing with complex, interrelated disadvantages that make them more likely to experience long-term or repeated housing instability compared to men.
We are excited to get started and through this partnership approach will begin to make a real transformation to the lives of the women we work with.”
– Mo Sykes,
CEO of The Welcome Organisation
