A new permanent Chief Executive has been appointed for leading homelessness charity St Mungo’s.
Emma Haddad joins the organisation following a rigorous recruitment process which took place over the summer. She brings with her a wealth of experience and knowledge in supporting people who have been displaced and marginalised, joining from central Government where she was the Director General for Asylum and Protection. Joanna Killian, chair of St Mungo’s Board of Trustees, said: “I am delighted that Emma has been appointed as our permanent Chief Executive. “Her knowledge and experience in supporting people who have been displaced and marginalised is very relevant to our role here in supporting the most vulnerable in society and she has a clear determination to end homelessness. We all welcome her to the organisation.” Dr Haddad said: “I am absolutely thrilled to be joining St Mungo’s. Its mission is hugely important to me and it will be a privilege to lead the organisation. “In the current economic climate, the services and support we offer will be more vital than ever. I look forward to working with colleagues across St Mungo’s and with partners in the shared aim of ending homelessness.” Ms Killian also thanked Rebecca Sycamore, who took over as the charity’s interim Chief Executive in May following the sudden death of Steven Douglas CBE, who had been Chief Executive since July 2020. Ms Sycamore returns to her substantive role of Executive Director of Strategy and Development. Dr Haddad begins her first week with the organisation on Monday 14 November. The position of CEO of St Mungo’s was advertised in June, and following a rigorous selection process over the summer, the successful candidate was informed and accepted the position in early September. Find out more about Emma Haddad here You can read about Steve Douglas CBE here You can read about Rebecca Sycamore here
St Mungo’s joins call for increased funding for homeless charities
St Mungo’s has signed a joint open letter to the Chancellor, calling for an increase in funding for homelessness services to prevent frontline service closures. The letter, signed by 32 homeless charities and shared with the i paper, urges Jeremy Hunt to increase funding for homelessness and rough sleeping services in line with inflation when he announces his Medium-Term Fiscal Statement at the end of this month. The charities warn that “recent history” shows that cuts to public spending will lead to an increase in homelessness, with government figures showing a 168 percent rise in rough sleeping between 2010 and 2017, during the government’s austerity agenda. The letter highlights that the rising cost of living will push more people into homelessness at a time when frontline services will be forced to scale back or close. A recent poll of 77 homeless charities carried out by the membership body Homeless Link found that 92 per cent were worried the rising cost of living would affect their ability to maintain service and support standards. One in four services agreed the cost of living crisis risked service closures.
St Mungo’s to expand vital services for rough sleepers and homeless couples in Reading
More support will soon be available to people sleeping rough and couples who are homeless in Reading, thanks to leading homelessness charity, St Mungo’s and Reading Borough Council. The new ‘Housing First and Complex Couples Move on Support’ service will help couples who have experienced homelessness and struggled to stay in long term accommodation, find and keep a home, together. It is the first time that a dedicated couple’s service has been run in the town. St Mungo’s will also be expanding its outreach service in the town which supports people sleeping rough, and hope to see the number of people living on the streets fall as a result. Both services, run in partnership with the Council, will operate for three years from late 2022 to 2025. Helen Denyer, Regional Director for St Mungo’s, said: “We are really pleased we will be providing these important services, particularly as the cost of living crisis is putting more people in a vulnerable position and at risk of potential homelessness. “It is especially exciting for us to be running this innovative couple’s Housing First service, alongside support for vulnerable individuals. Our aim is to help people recover from homelessness and find a stable place to live and call home, and it is only right that couples who are suitable for Housing First and want to live together have suitable accommodation available. “And to be able to extend our vital outreach provision is an extremely positive step towards ending homelessness in Reading. Our specialist teams are out every day right where they are needed, helping to make every night someone’s last on the streets. The partnership with Reading Council means we can continue doing this for years to come, helping more people move off the streets for good.” St Mungo’s has been a leading homelessness service provider in Reading for many years, operating street outreach support as well as supported accommodation, the pioneering modular homes at Caversham Road and a specialist women’s service, the Nova Project. Cllr Ellie Emberson, Lead Member for Housing at Reading Borough Council, said: “Reading Council has a proven track record of supporting homelessness residents in the town. We know a real difference can be made with a partnership approach and have effectively worked alongside our charity partner St Mungo’s for a number of years. We’re pleased to extend our ongoing support of homelessness projects in the Borough and specifically, working with St Mungo’s to help support those most in need, as we have done already with initiatives such as the Caversham Road modular homes project which provides 40 former rough sleepers with their own home alongside round the clock support provided by St Mungo’s.” The expanded Street Population Outreach Team (SPOT) will provide more flexible support and the addition of an ‘in-reach’ function for clients after they have successfully moved away from the streets to prevent recurring episodes of rough sleeping. There will also be more emphasis on preventing homelessness in the first instance, with tenancy support for vulnerable people and those at risk of losing their home. The Housing First service will follow the same model that has been successfully implemented in other regions across England, including London, Oxford, Brighton and Bournemouth, which St Mungo’s has been at the forefront of. Housing First provides a tenancy first, followed by intensive and tailored support as an effective long-term solution for people recovering from homelessness. The specialist focus on support for couples is an innovative approach being taken in Reading. The new services mark a further move toward homelessness prevention and recovery as opposed to late-stage intervention, a key part of Reading Borough Council’s Preventing Homelessness Strategy. Funding for these services has come from the UK Government’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) as part of the Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) funding stream awarded to local councils.
A critical issue
Dominic Williamson, Executive Director of Strategy and Policy, St Mungo’s, talks about the review he undertook into our approach to working with Home Office enforcement teams between 2010 and 2017. Today (5 Nov 2019) St Mungo’s publishes an internal review I was asked to undertake by our board of trustees in response to criticism of St Mungo’s for “collaborating” in the Government’s “hostile environment” migration policy. Our charity has spent 50 years helping people who are homeless and destitute on the streets around us. The desire to help was, and still is, melded with a real of sense of injustice and anger that our society seems unable – or perhaps unwilling – to guarantee the very basic of safety nets that might prevent our fellow citizens ending up deprived of dignity and the most essential necessity of life: a home. This societal failing seems more intractable when the people are from elsewhere. Fifty years ago it was often people from Scotland or Ireland on the streets of London. This decade, alongside growing numbers of UK citizens sleeping rough, the “outsider”, has been more likely to be from Poland or the Roma community in Romania. Over the years St Mungo’s has channelled that sense of solidarity and anger into developing our services and into campaigning for change. For us, the two go hand in hand. Common goal By the mid-2000s, government investment in services and reform meant the numbers on the streets had fallen by two thirds. Part of this success came from a close relationship between local authorities, charities and other partners, working together in partnership with a common goal of reaching out to and helping people to come off the streets for good. In some situations joint work included an enforcement element, for example, working with the police to tackle large encampments in order to reach exploited or vulnerable people. While the numbers of UK citizens on the streets was falling, the accession to the EU of East European countries and the resulting migration brought a new group of people on to the streets. This was of such concern that in 2008 the Labour government’s new rough sleeping strategy promised that the Home Office would assist in finding solutions. Engagement by the Home Office started as a pilot in Westminster in early 2010 and then extended to other areas in the next few years. Home Office Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (HO-ICE) teams conducted joint operations with local councils often working alongside outreach workers, including teams from St Mungo’s and other charities. The HO-ICE teams issued “minded to remove” warning letters explaining to the individual that if they continued to sleep rough, not exercise their EU treaty rights nor engage with realistic options off the streets, they could be detained and removed back to their home country in the EU. For the homelessness charities involved this approach was seen as an extension of the “assertive outreach” model that had become established good practice over the previous decade. The warning of potential action by the Home Office was considered to be a proactive tool, giving outreach workers time to engage and support a change in behaviour before the threat of any enforcement action became a reality. The approach included the option to share basic information without consent as part of efforts to encourage people to take up options away from the dangers of the street. Were St Mungo’s and the other charities wrong to work in this way? Dying on the streets During the review I spoke to colleagues who felt strongly for and against this approach. Some colleagues said that by working in this way people would stop trusting outreach workers, avoid being found or even become aggressive towards them. On the other side, those who supported it strongly felt this joint work was morally justified by the reality of the alternative: growing numbers of people left to become unwell, and frequently dying on the streets. I heard some horrific stories from colleagues about the conditions in which people were living. One worker graphically described stepping through human excrement to get to a hidden area in a park where people were living in makeshift structures. Another explained how people were driven to stealing alcohol-based hand sanitiser from hospitals to drink. Emails I found in the review showed our teams sometimes working with severely mentally ill people where it was essential to establish where the person was from and that meant contacting the Home Office. In many other cases it was clear that outreach colleagues were able to advocate for EU citizens, support them into work or tenancies and help them demonstrate to the Home Office that they were starting to exercise their treaty rights. Change in approach Then in May 2016 the Government introduced a change in policy that began to treat rough sleeping in itself as a breach of EU treaty rights (a policy which was ruled unlawful by a judicial review in December 2017). This policy change meant the window of opportunity to positively engage with clients became shorter and the rapid use of detention and removal became more likely. As a consequence from July 2016 outreach managers at St Mungo’s agreed a change in approach, which said that working with the Home Office should become a last resort. In the years before this, the Home Secretary Theresa May had announced her intention to make Britain a “hostile environment” for illegal migrants. This was quickly followed by the infamous advertising vans telling illegal migrants to “Go Home” and legislation requiring landlords to check the migration status of their tenants. Campaigners against the hostile environment practice and rhetoric began to see any charity working with the Home Office as “collaborators”. St Mungo’s suddenly found itself the target of critical media reports and activist campaigning. For colleagues in outreach teams who had worked tirelessly to find solutions for homeless migrants, this criticism was particularly upsetting. Critical lessons This has been a difficult and painful experience for St Mungo’s. Which is why it
