West Midlands: Helping turn around young lives

• St Basils housing association provides supported housing services for seven councils
• Young people receive employment and mental health coaching while in supported housing
• Those who have been supported report it provides them with “a sense of achievement, motivation, enthusiasm and confidence”

St Basils housing association is commissioned to provide supported housing accommodation, alongside supporting young people in the community, by seven West Midlands councils for young people.

It runs more than 40 different housing schemes in Birmingham, Solihull, Coventry, Sandwell, North Worcestershire and Warwickshire, which provide support to more than 1,000 16 to 25-year-olds every year. Half arrive after a breakdown in their family living arrangements.

The young people who are accommodated can spend anything from a few weeks to up to two years in the supported housing.

Eight in 10 of them are not engaged in education, training or employment when they arrive. To tackle this, St Basils provides a comprehensive range of support to help those young people turn their lives around. Each young person will have a personal progression coach to work with them to enhance their talents and skills, and overcome barriers to their aspirations.

There is an employability team which provides bespoke support to young people while they are in supported housing. The team runs the #YouCan programme, which is a five-week course combining teamwork exercises, including a treasure hunt around the local area, along with sessions on CVs and interview techniques.

Each individual is also given an employability coach who works one-to-one with them on their own self-development plan and extra support they need.

St Basils Employability Manager Andrew MacKenzie said the support is invaluable. “It is designed to be fun and engaging. You see the young people develop self confidence and self-awareness week by week and at the end they gain an accreditation and we support them with what they want to do next. We have had people go on to do volunteering, apprenticeships and to do work experience.

It is great to see the difference it makes – these are young people who have often not engaged in programmes before so it is really rewarding to see. 

And you find they really support each other as a group and that has a legacy going forward – they have a support network.”

Alongside the employability support they also get help developing mental resilience. The My Strengths Training for Life programme has been developed in partnership with the University of Birmingham’s sports psychology department. The approach mirrors the mental strength and resilience training that top athletes go through. It also includes a residential trip to the Lake District.

This complements St Basils’ investment and commitment since 2011 in taking a whole organisation approach to becoming a psychologically informed environment (PIE). Support is provided by an in-house psychologist, who has been seconded in from the NHS and

One of those who has been supported Leon, who went on to do volunteering in the community after taking part in the #YouCan programme and is now working towards becoming a teacher.

He said the support he received provided him with “a sense of achievement, motivation, enthusiasm and confidence”. “I enjoyed meeting new people and hearing different viewpoints, developing my own goals and plans for the future and having the support and company of my peers and coaches.

The skills I have learned are truly valuable. I now realise that I can achieve the things I want to in life and have gained some great emotional coping strategies and valuable advice from my coaches.”

St Basils Chief Executive Jean Templeton said: “We‘ve long-recognised that providing accommodation alone is an inadequate response to young homelessness. So our services aim to provide a holistic response based on individual need and experience to help young people make the transition to adulthood.

“We know what works for young people – support, understanding and security. It is what families in homes up and down the country provide for young people. What we have tried to put in place is something that provides that for those who for one reason or another do not have that home support to fall back on.

“We want the young people we work with to leave St Basils with a legacy of skills, knowledge, experiences, emotional and social resilience and contacts that enable them to continue growing and maturing as they become young adults.”

Latest figures suggest that is happening with nearly 90 per cent of young people who leave St Basils’ supported accommodation doing so in a planned way and move on to independent living.

But Ms Templeton said one big challenge is the lack of step-down arrangements. “It is a real problem for all supported accommodation providers and it does make it difficult transitioning some young people out.”

St Basils is involved in one scheme in Sandwell which provides step-down support. It runs more than 80 Live and Work accommodation units. The units provide access to high-quality, low-cost housing for up to two years for those aged up to 26 and in work or apprenticeship schemes.

The young people manage their own tenancy, job and money – although St Basils staff are still available if needed. The rents are kept low so the young people can meet their expenses from their wages and save.

“Too often, they are trapped in high rents, requiring dual navigation of the benefit system alongside entry level work or apprenticeship wages. Often the complexity means that work loses out to the greater fear of losing critical benefits,” added Ms Templeton.

She said it is also important to have arrangements in place to prevent the need to place young people in supported housing in the first place, if they do not require that level of support. ‘We need a national housing offer for young people which enables them to live, work, earn and learn’ and prevents youth homelessness. We need to plan for what we want to achieve, not just what we want to avoid.’

St Basils manages multi-agency youth hubs in Birmingham and Solihull and is about to open one in Coventry. Staff are co-located with teams from children’s services and housing to provided support to help prevent homelessness. Some 4,000 young people approach them for assistance each year.

And for those in a crisis, there is emergency accommodation including a Nightstop scheme, which uses hosts in the local community to provide emergency accommodation on a night-by-night basis.

There is also a supported lodgings scheme, Home-2-Home, for those aged 16 to 18 who have experienced family breakdown, but who have lower level needs than those in supported housing. The young people stay for short periods in a spare room of a family home.

“We find that can be transformational for young people and stop them needing the more intensive support that is provided in supported housing,” said Ms Templeton.

Solihull Council Social Housing and Homelessness Lead Hannah Buckley said: ‘Through working in partnership with St Basils we achieve the best outcomes for our young people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness - they are the ultimate advocate for young people and the challenges they face.

‘In addition to the more formal reporting we receive from St Basils around their outcomes, we also see the real difference their services make when we visit their services. On my last visit, a young person told me how St Basils was giving him the skills he needed to go out into the world.’

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