City of London Street Outreach & Support Services

This project aims to provide three distinct levels of specialist services to support people identified as street homeless within the City of London, with a shared aim of providing healthy, safe and sustainable routes from the street, based on individual circumstances and needs. Street Homelessness in the City of London remains high with a high number of identified individuals coming from other local areas outside of the City. The service will be split between three sub teams, Street Outreach A Street Outreach Team, working across the City, responding to demand where and when it arises, triaging and assessing those identified as Street Homeless in the City, making immediate use of “Off the Streets” accommodation and forming a client forward plan including reconnecting them to their area of local connection where possible and appropriate. Support will be on an assertive outreach basis, striking a balance of support between those that can be signposted to help themselves and those with more complex needs that need more in depth assessment, relationship building and multi pronged support and multi agency support alongside a number of committed partners. Mobile Support A floating support service, working with those that have had an interim move into various types of shorter term accommodation, such as “off the streets” schemes, hot or cold weather related schemes, homelessness accommodation under legislation or any other local, sub regional, London wide or national schemes that come to fruition during the lifetime of the service. This service element will ensure that clients in these settings are able to set up and sustain their accommodation and again in turn are able to access multi agency support to help them progress and in the case of those for whom a statutory duty is being assessed or held, supporting them to work through personal housing plans removing barriers to longer term resettlement. Long Term Support / Multiply Disadvantaged Clients Supporting clients with more complex and longer term street homelessness histories or needs across a range of settings from street homelessness to supported pathways and into independent living. Focussing on identifying and removing barriers to resettlement and taking a team around me approach, this service element will be a constant in their clients support, coordinating and bringing together multi agencies with assertiveness and diligence, achieving quality outcomes for their clients. All three service elements will have a shared goal of reducing City Rough Sleeping, performing early interventions wherever possible to keep occurrences of street homelessness brief, and working with a plethora of services in achieving a joint aim of quality support and outcomes for clients. Innovation and Flexibility The Covid Pandemic, the approach to Everyone In, the roll out of support to help people access additional services related to covid and the years since have changed the nature of ending rough sleeping, and this change continues to be felt. To meet this change, the City of London Corporation is designing this opportunity to be able to react to future challenges and opportunities. Using the learning of the last 6 years both locally and across the country, alongside the input of those with lived experience of street homelessness and accessing our services; this contract will be made up of the core services as outlined, but, additionally the opportunity to add on services and elements that may be needed over the lifetime of the service. These “flexible elements” will allow commissioners to enhance the service should the need and opportunity arise to do so, and will range from enhancements to react to seasonal pressures, to the potential of adding specialist elements to the service such as more specialist support around physical or mental health, a building based approach, enhanced reconnection work, gender based specialists and others. Success Indicators of a successful service will be: Reduction in Rough Sleeping Numbers Rapid triage/assessment of those sleeping rough Maximised use of “off the streets accommodation” Increased reconnections Sustainment of accommodation options Coordination of Support on a Team Around Me basis Improved engagement with health services and support Interested providers will be asked to consider how to ensure resources are well provisioned and focussed on those clients most in need of support, based on current and historical CHAIN data for the City of London. Potential Providers will be asked for their proposals to locate the service in or as close to the City of London as possible in premises suitable for client access and potentially to consider what partnerships they may be able to form to achieve this.