Street Impact Brighton Limited (SIB) was established to work with some of Brighton’s most complex rough sleepers; people with histories which involve prolonged and repeat episodes of rough sleeping as well as complex issues around alcohol, drug use and mental health.
The project was due to start in 2017, however attempts to deliver a four-year multiagency, Sussex-wide SIB were unsuccessful. The following year Brighton and Hove City Council commissioned St Mungo’s to deliver Brighton SIB – a pioneering project to work with 100 people who were identified as being hard to reach, and the most difficult for our teams to encourage to engage with our support.
The project officially started in March 2018 and is a Social Impact Bond which has social investors putting up the funds to meet the scheme’s running costs and is reimbursed on a 100% payment by results basis by Brighton & Hove City Council. This is backed by the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
Fast forward three years and the project closes at the end of March 2021 with some wonderful outcomes. Paulina Drydra, former SIB Outreach Manager shares their journey.
How does SIB work?
Over the past three years we have been working with a cohort of 100 named individuals who have experienced long periods of time rough sleeping or who repeatedly return to the streets. We have a dedicated team of four staff: one manager and three SIB workers. The SIB workers are assigned up to 30 clients each at any one time.
We were not looking to replace or replicate services that people already had strong links to, but to support those services and fill any gaps with targeted personal support and funds to help people really sustain their recovery.
The SIB models works because it relies on a great degree of trust between a person sleeping rough and a support worker who has the time and capacity to tackle the complex causes of someone’s homelessness and support them to recover in their own way.
Optimism when all hope is lost
Being a SIB worker is about carrying optimism when someone sleeping rough may have lost all hope, while at the same time being absolutely respectful of the individual’s choices and decisions – because it is their life after all. This takes time and focus, and the SIB model gave us that.
The project essentially succeeds or fails according to how well the team are able to deliver a ‘throughcare’ service – the secret ingredient is providing a new way of working with clients and not replicating something that hasn’t worked before.
What makes SIB different?
The two differences that have enabled us to sustain long term outcomes for some of Brighton’s most complex rough sleepers have been consistency and freedom to innovate.
We offer consistency because we are with people for the whole process allowing the worker/client relationships to develop slowly.
We have greater freedom to individually tailor our approach to achieve the end goal for our clients, backed up by funds. This kind of approach is harder to take in more traditionally commissioned services, where costs and time spent with each client is directly influenced by commissioning frameworks and contractual expectations.
Our success
As we come to the end of the programme, I am proud to say we have achieved some great results. We have engaged with 100 people which is 100% of the original target. We have supported 78% to either enter or sustain their accommodation, providing the vital support they need to get their life back on track, 28% people have successfully signed a long term tenancy agreement and 15% have sustained their tenancy for over one year. There are currently no rough sleepers in Brighton that sit within the SIB Cohort. It’s wonderful to see people feeling in control of their lives again.
Find out more about our Social Impact Bonds model and successes and outcomes to date here.
