Trustees' Report 2009
Background
The Hub is a daytime drop-in centre offering warmth, practical help and advice in an atmosphere of respect and friendship to homeless men and women around Dorchester. It is open 5 mornings a week for regular users and wayfarers, and certain afternoons for appointments.
It became a registered charity in February 2003. The Board of Trustees meets bi-monthly, and consists of 8 trustees, staff and volunteer representatives and an Operational Sub-Group meets in the alternate month with regular service user input, through an independent Service Users’ Forum. The Trustees are local people of whom 5 have professional management experience and three are Hub volunteer staff.
Staffing
The manager and assistant manager are employed for a total of 44 hours in the Hub. They work closely with a team of volunteers to provide a service for three main groupings:
- the regular Hub attenders who are homeless and working on a planned programme to address their individual problems;
- wayfarers who are just passing through;
- the recently re-housed, who need support to make their own adjustments to housing.
In addition the assistant manager has been employed for the past 6 months for a further 16 hours to work towards setting up a branch of the Hub for advice and support (rather than for meals) in Weymouth. This is nearing fruition apart from the inevitable difficulty of finding suitable premises.
Numbers
We now see around 5 to10 people each day, though the numbers vary a lot. An average of 30 individuals come each month (more in summer than winter), of whom an average of 5 are new to the Hub (range is from 0 to 10 in a month).
Achievements
Each year, we have been helping more and more people get into housing, and in 2008/9 this figure again reached over 30 people. Some of these moved into sheltered accommodation where their addictions would be treated and others went straight into independent living and continued to need the Hub’s on-going help to tackle their problems.
We have good relationships with related statutory and voluntary agencies, and have visiting input from professional workers - Shelter, a Nurse Practitioner, CADAS, probation and the mental health team.
Some people are helped to return to other places where they have local connections, so they are more likely to get into permanent housing; others are helped to address their addiction or mental health problems.
The Hub has a Good Neighbour Policy and regular liaison with police, housing officials, environmental health and the local neighbours maintains good relationships and support.
Funding
The Hub has to raise over £35,000 each year just for running costs. This comes largely from small grants we continuously apply for and local Churches, organisations and individuals are very generous to us. We have a Friends of the Hub group who pay an annual subscription and run two fund-raising events each year. Funding is always a problem and preoccupation to us. For the coming year we are pleased to have attracted about £26,000 worth of small grants to fund a project that improves the facilities and support for the professional staff who visit the Hub, but still the core costs have to be met.
On top of this there is a £30,000 funding arrangement from the Primary Care Trust, which covers the nurse practitioner input to homeless people in the whole area and now a mental health worker too.
Support and Partnerships
There has been consistent support for this project from the local community, shown through the Local Authority, the press, the Churches, NHS, schools and the Friends of the Hub but especially the amazing number of people who just call in to bring goods, food and cash.
The Future
- Weymouth
A similar advice and support service will start in Weymouth, working in cooperation with the already existing Soul Food, as soon as suitable premises have been found. We have to seek Charity Commission approval to thus extend our geographical area and we envisage a Weymouth committee of Friends of the Hub to provide support and local involvement.
- Longer Term Strategy
It was never our intention to remain as the sole service for homeless people in this area and the need for residential accommodation to meet various levels of need is paramount. As we promised last year, we have now explored working in partnership with Bournemouth Churches’ Housing Association (BCHA) and we are pleased to state that we are ready for the Hub’s management and services (both in Dorchester and Weymouth) to be taken over by them. It is our mutual hope that, over the course of 3 to 5 years, a total service for rough sleepers across Dorset could be set up with Supporting People money to purchase it.
Meanwhile, it is our intention that the Friends of the Hub will continue with only small amendments to our constitution and the approval of our Friends for these management and constitutional changes will be sought at a special meeting just before the AGM in May 2009.
Summary
Homelessness is high on the rural agenda but there is little government recognition of this. From being an area with no service at all for the street homeless, Dorchester now has a service it is proud of, where people who want to get off the streets and settle into more mainstream lives, can find the skilled help and support they need. There is much more still to be done in the whole of South & West Dorset but we hope that the handing over to a professional company with a good track record and 40 years’ experience will ensure that it happens.
NOTE: Further information, articles and links can be found on www.dorsethub.org.uk