The Principles of Outreach

A new set of principles and guidelines for running high quality and effective outreach services for people rough sleeping were released by Homeless Link in January. New Hope’s Outreach Plus team attended the launch event and were pleased to find that most of the core principles were the way we were already working.

Outreach principles, Homeless Link - Jan 2024

“We were encouraged to see how we, within New Hope’s Outreach Plus team, are already meeting these principles and actually surpassing some of them too. It’s always nice to see our work ‘ahead of the curve.’

One of the advantages of running an outreach service with a local charity over a large organisation is that we have the time and capacity to get to know people, build rapport and try different things to meet people’s needs. Because we are not very big, conversations can be easily had between the different support services and managers to make quick and effective decisions for the people we work with.

There are a number of staff and volunteers with lived experience including within my own team so when we meet people who are rough sleeping, we can genuinely say ‘I know what you mean’ rather than ‘what you’re going through must be terrible.’ I think it is valuable for people we meet to see that their situation is not forever, that even when someone is on a downward trajectory or at the very bottom, there is always a way forward.

The way we work is informed by regular debriefs where we can see how we can do things differently for our service users and ourselves to provide the best support we can, while keeping everyone involved safe and in a good place.”

Steve, Outreach Plus manager.

If you’d like to know more about Outreach Plus or how you can help, click the link below: