Day centres are a vital component of the support services being provided to single people, either homeless or at risk of being so. The London Housing Foundation is therefore facilitating work to assist the fifty plus day centres in the capital.
This work has so far comprised:
Objectives
Promote the day centre sector
The group seeks to ensure that relevant stakeholders have a positive and accurate perception of what is meant by the term ‘day centre’.
Given the precariousness of day centre funding, funders are a particularly important stakeholder group. One member of the group likened the project to the makeover received by hostels in recent years.
In order to take this work forward it will be necessary to:
- Identify key stakeholders
- Research their current perceptions
- Compare these to the reality (or realities) as identified by the research
- Deliver a marketing programme to bring perception in line with reality
- Re-test perceptions.
An initial laboratory scoped out the key stakeholders, and the messages day centres want to get across.
Develop a more cohesive day centre sector
This will be explored further at the first laboratory. It is hoped the exercise to clarify different types of centre will help these to work in a more complementary manner; agree to disagree over important issues; collaborate on common areas of interest. Centres may wish to explore sharing resources such as expertise or back-office functions, but this would clearly have to be an organic development. Groups of similar centres might agree on certain quality standards they would meet for a voluntary code. This would be a substantial piece of work, but could drive up quality standards and help promote the sector.
Improve impact
Day centres want to enhance their ability to help people make positive transitions and the group are interested in a more systematic investigation into what really makes a difference on a person's journey from chaos and dependence to stability and autonomy.
They proposed, therefore, identifying a number of former users of different centres who have made the transition successfully, and carrying out qualitative research identifying the key elements that enabled this. Day centres could then concentrate on delivering these elements. The boundaries and practicalities of this research will be scoped out at the first laboratory.
Building an accurate picture
Underlying the programme is the definition of what day centres are, and what they have in common. The development of a detailed and accurate picture of the sector through a limited piece of research is, therefore, essential. This information will provide (for the first time) a solid basis for promoting the work of day centres. It will also enable the wider group of centres to be segmented into smaller groups with similar services and philosophies who could collaborate effectively.
Issues covered will include:
Information: Current information - on centres, their clients, work models, outcomes, and other critical features, is of varied quality. The recent briefing produced by the Day Centre group contains one single hard number: the total number of day centres.
Client groups: Similar models may be applied to very different groups, for example rough sleepers, young people, A8 nationals, or those at risk of homelessness.
Historical development: Many physical facilities have been dramatically upgraded and some centres have added new services, such as employment and training, to the point where food, social space and basic support now form only a small part of total delivery.
Philosophical differences: Centres disagree, sometimes bitterly, about the relative importance of providing safety and promoting change. Service models often vary in line with these differences and there are numerous models in operation, drawn from many sources such as social or pastoral work, education and training, health, or coercive approaches.