‘No Second Night Out Project’ prevented over 600 people from becoming homeless in Rochdale

‘No Second Night Out Project’ prevented over 600 people from becoming homeless in Rochdale

Over 50 people, including local councillors, attended an evaluation event held at the Petrus Hub to share findings of an independent evaluation conducted by the Rochdale and District Mind Discovery Team.

Petrus Community, in partnership with the Bond Board, were successful in securing Government funds from the Homelessness Transition Fund to provide a ‘No Second Night Out’ (NSNO) Service in Rochdale between January 2013 and August 2014.

The aim of the service was to address homelessness in the borough by working with rough sleepers to find solutions and to engage people in preventative work to avoid homelessness.

Phil Foster, Deputy Co-ordinator for Petrus, introduced the event and highlighted how ‘effective partnership working had been crucial in how successful the service had been at preventing people from becoming homeless’

Guest speakers were Ian Jolley, Homelessness Manager Strategic Housing for Rochdale Council, and Paul Connery, Strategic and Partnership Manager for Homeless Link.

A short film produced by independent film maker Lee Kirby containing interviews with service users and stakeholders was also shown to the audience.

Ian Jolley explained that the original aim of the ‘NSNO’ service in Rochdale was to engage with 300 people at risk of sleeping rough and becoming homeless.

However, the service had exceeded this target by "engaging over 600 people and preventing them from becoming homeless over an 18 month period".

He echoed the remarks made by Phil Foster about "services working in partnership to overcome massive challenges’ and acknowledged ‘the support of other agencies such as the Sanctuary Trust in the delivery of this service".

Paul Connery reported that ‘175 areas in the UK had been allocated NSNO funds to help reduce rough sleeping’. The funding has "enabled 67% of people who were rough sleeping to be helped and prevented from returning to the streets".

The funding for these types of schemes runs out nationally in March 2015. Mr Connery highlighted current national issues including the fact that "there are more new people presenting as homeless, and the numbers of people rough sleeping has increased by 37% since 2010".

He also pointed out that there has been "an increase in youth homelessness, increase in unstable accommodation, increase in people presenting with multiple and complex needs and in the numbers of women who are now rough sleeping".

He acknowledged that this increasing demand is happening at the same time as there has been a huge reduction in Government spending which has seen a decline in supported accommodation and advice services. He re-iterated the "importance of true partnership working to maximise on the opportunities to gain funding to get resources out to those who most need it".