Floating Support Services
As part of the Southern Area Children’s Services Planning, the overall aim of the Young People Leaving Care/Those requiring aftercare services and homeless young people group, was to ensure that ‘all vulnerable young people aged 16-21 years receive the appropriate support and assistance to encourage them to lead safe and socially included lives’. To help achieve this aim, one of the actions was to establish floating support services across the Southern Board area. Through the Supporting People Initiative three organisations tendered and won the contract to provide such services, Edward Street Hostel Ltd (ESH) being one.
ESH has been providing accommodation and support services to single homeless people since 1981. As part of its strategy to respond to support needs in the community, it has introduced a Floating Support Project for the Craigavon and Banbridge Community Health and Social Services Trust area.
As stated, Floating Support is a service, funded by Supporting People which seeks to assist young people, aged 16 to 25, who are in need of support to move into and maintain their own home, and to offer opportunities to further develop life and social skills.
Through individual support plans the young person looks at areas such as budgeting, cooking, form completion, benefits advice, housing rights, safety within the home, health awareness and accessing leisure facilities.
The Floating Support team work in partnership with community and statutory agencies to guide and encourage young people to access education and employment opportunities thus ensuring they have a chance to play an active and positive role within their community.
E.S.H. Floating Support Project is staffed Mr. Alan Tate, Project Manager and two support workers, Mary Maginn and Frances Knipe. After a mail shot to a wide range of voluntary and statutory organisations, we began taking referrals in October 2005. Initial referrals were received from “Young Persons Project” and “Leaving and Aftercare Teams”, however, referrals are now received from a wide range of sources including the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, voluntary and community groups as well as self-referrals, our growing caseload has now reached over 30 young people, each receiving an individual package of support.
Some of our young people recently applied for and successfully secured capital grant funding from “Craigavon Youth Bank” to set up a self help budgeting group and programme, we see this as a great development for the Floating Support Project, now in partnership with Key 2, (ESH Life Skills Project) the young people continue to identify issues relevant to their needs.
A steering group consisting of Craigavon and Banbridge HSST, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and ESH Floating Support Project meets regularly to discuss issues or concerns relating to the running and development of the service. As the project is going from strength to strength it is envisaged that this group will explore future areas of need highlighted by Children Service’s Planning and other housing strategies.
For further information contact the Project Manager at 02838 334949 or fs@edwardstreethostel.com
Floating Support Publications
Please click on any of the images below to open the publications as a PDF. (If you have problems downloading the publications you may need to update your version of Adobe Acrobat Reader you can do this fro free by visiting the Adobe website or Clicking Here. If you would like to receive any of the publications for your business or community centre, please contact us.
Floating Support Poster (0.824MB)
