What is the Winter Provision Project?
The Winter Provision Project focused on the most entrenched rough sleepers identified at the Rough Sleeping Count in October 2020 – all were offered accommodation and support. In total, 29 individuals took up the offer. Vennture’s focus on safety and security transformed the group’s behaviours and dramatically reduced demand on blue light services.
Vennture offers cross-sector, cross-agency support that focuses on those who are rough sleeping and/or sofa surfing during the winter months, when individuals are even more vulnerable and at risk of harm from not having proper accommodation and support in cold weather.
Our approach promotes recognition of each individual, builds collaboration through information-sharing, and shapes the system to help people towards independent living where they have the emotional resilience to self-determine. We seek to work with individuals to end destructive lifestyles.
For more information about the Winter Provision Project, please complete the enquiry form on our Contact page.
Winter Provision Project 2020
This past winter, the Vennture team has been hard at work to meet the needs of the vulnerable rough sleepers population of Hereford and surrounding areas. Our goal was to “make rough sleeping and sofa surfing rare, brief, infrequent, and non-reoccurring” for these individuals.
Through the Winter Provision Project, 59 individuals, including 12 EEA nationals, were assisted into safe, warm accommodation with support available at those locations. Out of those individuals, 10 were homed, with 5 returning home. There were also no street deaths this winter!
In the community, we developed a Homeless Contact Hub to bridge the gap for the most vulnerable needing support, along with providing a high presence of our uniformed volunteers and link workers on the street to provide a calm, reassuring presence to anyone in need. Our volunteer mentors were also there to add capacity and support throughout the project.
Going forward from this winter, our aim is to ensure individuals supported through Winter Provision are supported to ‘move on’ into a safe, affordable home. We want to both ensure long-term, sustainable change for these people in need, as well as provide connections to wider support agencies.
A massive thank you to all who were involved in this lifechanging project – we’ve learnt so much through this initiative. We are now working to prepare to help more rough sleepers in the future, and help them stay off the street for good!