We guide, we support, you have housing

Description

Homelessness, resp. housing shortage is growing in Slovakia. Although we have little data on the needs and characteristics of homeless families and individuals, practice shows increasing pressure on social services (family shelters) that can manage but not deal with the situation.

The project focuses on providing professional accompany and support to families with children in housing need involved in the Housing First project for families in Košice. It will be a pilot application of this approach in Slovakia. The project aims to test the independent living support service in a specific context of application the Housing First approach, and based on gained experience and evidence of its functioning to enable its further dissemination and use by civic organizations and cities to end homelessness in Slovakia.

In the pilot project Housing First for families in Košice, the professional team of the organization will ensure the accompaniment of families to maintain their housing and develop the potential of its members. Activities will include participation in the mapping and selection of families in the project, comprehensive program preparation and team training, family care, long-term family support, participation in project evaluation and monitoring, and the methodological support of the project itself.

The project partner is the DeDo Foundation, which aims to successfully implement the first Housing First project for families in Košice (and in the Slovak Republic) set up as an autonomous project feasible without public sector support, and consciously contribute to social change, public policy change, termination and prevention of housing need.

The project will be beneficiary for the families with children, vulnerable groups, peple threathened by poverty and homeless people. 

Summary of project results

The aim of the project was to pilot the Housing First (HF) approach in the local conditions of Košice as one of the proven and evidence-based tools for ending homelessness. The project focused on families with homeless children, who make up 2/3 of the homeless population in Košice.In a first step in November 2020, the project mapped homeless families in Košice in shelters and randomly selected 10 families (+ 10 substitutes) who were offered participation in a program consisting of living in a rental apartment in a common neighborhood (preferential rent) and support from a multidisciplinary team provided in order to maintain their housing. Part of the project was the implementation of research activities focused on the effects and impacts of housing with support on the families involved and also on cost-benefit analysis. The pilot implementation of the HF approach enabled the end of homelessness of 10 families with children, while also giving the professional team the opportunity to learn in the field of HF approach, relationship and trauma, as well as to develop an internal methodology for applying the HF approach. At the same time, the project enabled the application of the "independent living support" social service to support homeless families to maintain acquired rental housing, where the organization was the first in Slovakia to register this social service to apply HF approach to ending homelessness. The broader effect of the project was to arouse the interest of the professional public in ending homelessness using the HF approach (workshops and conferences), as well as creating cooperation between the organization and the DEDO Foundation (project partner) with the City of Košice.In addition to launching a pilot HF project, one of the steps to end homelessness was the implementation of the first Registration Week for families with children in housing need in Košice, which provided in-depth data on family homelessness and created a list of 309 homeless families to be addressed. Thanks to the synergetic effects of the project, the project promoters and the DEDO Foundation managed to reach a total of 19 families in the period under review, with the aim of dealing with a total of 35 families by the end of 2022. The project thus started the process of ending homelessness, it has the potential in synergy with other NGOs and cities to end homelessness of individuals and families in Slovakia.