As the days draw colder and the nights longer, many of us are celebrating the festive season at home with those closest. But for those experiencing homelessness, this can be a difficult time. 

After uncertainty during the pandemic, we are once again faced with significant challenges as the cost of living crisis forces many into precarious circumstances. Our hearts go out to those affected by homelessness, and we’d like to thank front-line workers, staff, volunteers and everyone working in the sector.

We have accomplished a lot together, and we should be proud of everything that has been achieved over the past year in our work to create a society in which any experience of homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring.

It has been a pleasure working with you throughout 2022, and we would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your close ones a very merry Christmas, and share a few of our team’s successes from the year.

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Rhuaraidh, Public Affairs Lead

"The End it with Evidence campaign was relaunched at our Impact Forum in Birmingham, and in the last six months of this year the number of pledge signatories has increased by almost 100%! We have also increased the number of ambassadors with plans in place to maintain and build upon this momentum throughout 2023. You can read the blog written by our latest ambassador, Labour leader of London Barking and Dagenham Council, Darren Rodwell.

"We also attended political party conferences in the autumn, significantly increasing the visibility of the Centre and the End it with Evidence campaign. From these we struck up new relationships with Members of Parliament at Westminster and Holyrood as well as local authorities of significant interest to us as we expand our implementation work across the UK."
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Greg, Head of Communications and Public Affairs

"In July we published a policy paper on whether universities could do more to end homelessness, in partnership with the Higher Education Policy Institute.

"This is an important example of exploring how actors in civic society that are outside the homelessness sector can add additional capacity and fresh thinking to the challenge of ending homelessness. Our universities in the UK are among our strongest and most successful institutions, and many play a critical economic, intellectual, cultural and convening role in the communities in which they are placed.

"So by encouraging more causal research into homelessness interventions, evidence-led teaching and civic leadership, including to better understand and address homelessness among students, universities can play a critical role in accelerating an end to homelessness."
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Rob, Head of Practice and Partnerships

“We have achieved so much in our implementation work this year that it’s hard to choose. We massively expanded our reach and deepened our impact. But if I had to pick one, I’d pick collaborating with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to implement key elements of its Ending Rough Sleeping for Good strategy, including leading work alongside five ‘Early Adopter’ areas (London, Manchester, Newcastle, Bournemouth, Christchurch Poole, and the West Midlands) to co-design and implement a new data-led framework to transform understanding of progress towards ending rough sleeping locally and nationally. This included bringing together hundreds of local authorities to feed into the work in the summer which was a real highlight of the year."
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Sally, Events and Marketing Lead

“In June and November this year, we held our biannual Impact Forums in Birmingham and online. In Birmingham, we brought together hundreds of people in person and online to explore the theme of ‘new thinking for old problems’ on homelessness, and heard from speakers including Andy Burnham and Eddie Hughes MP – watch the highlights!

"In November, we were joined online over two days to discuss how we can prevent worsening homelessness in a cost of living emergency. A full recording can be found here. Oh, and we nearly forgot – we also managed to sneak in a Forum online in early January!"

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Heather, Implementation Lead

“Following the success of the implementation team’s evidence sprints, a series of workshops where we will work with local authorities to take a deep-dive into key skill and evidence areas, we created a series of resources for people who work in the sector. Our practitioner resources walk practitioners through how to find the data and evidence they need to make a greater impact in their work to end homelessness. Designed and tested with people managing or commissioning homelessness services, they should help practitioners to come up with ideas of how to apply the evidence to their local context.”

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We have lots planned for 2023 and we look forward to working with you next year. Subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to find out about our latest news, events and updates.

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