Over the first five weeks of Glasgow City Mission’s 2024/25 Winter Project, our Housing Settlement Officer (HSO) team have supported 104 unique individuals experiencing homelessness. We helped people access benefits they are entitled to, acquired rooms through Glasgow City’s Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) and provided emergency beds in safe city-centre locations. We supported 12 people at risk of rough sleeping who came to our drop-in dinner service and applied for funding to cover essential household goods for a new home. We were also pleased to lead a successful group trip to a local attraction. This provided individuals with the opportunity to get to know the city, improve their wellbeing, and begin building critical support networks and community. One individual commented that it was the first time they had ever been outside the city centre, and they were thrilled to find somewhere they could visit again.

I spoke to Lauryn, one of our six HSOs, about what she thinks has been key to the HSO team’s success so far. Partnership working, she told me, has been critical for ensuring support services have the information and cooperation needed to provide individuals experiencing homelessness with the right help at the right time. Secondly, the tight-knit support of the HSO team has kept Lauryn motivated. The team understands what each member is going through so they make sure to pick each other up in challenging times and celebrate each other’s successes. Lastly, showing people experiencing homelessness that the team genuinely cares about improving their situation, has allowed Lauryn and other HSOs to begin building restorative relationships. Lauryn feels this has helped to tackle the isolation of individuals, improved their wellbeing and developed their confidence to connect with other people and support services that they may not have felt able to link up with on their own.

Lauryn finds that the ability to reach out to people experiencing homelessness instead of waiting for them to come to her, is what makes the HSO role so effective. So far in her role, she has observed how people stuck in temporary accommodation usually become isolated and withdrawn. They are sometimes experiencing complex physical and mental health problems, and often relying on busy support services with long waiting lists. When this combination of factors becomes an individual’s norm, the idea of visiting an unfamiliar community hub or in-person service is either too hopeless or overwhelming to contemplate. HSOs work around this barrier by meeting people at their accommodation and asking what support they can provide in that moment. Once the facts are gathered and the person’s needs are clearly identified, HSOs can immediately get to work on improving an individual’s situation and speed up the process of moving a person from a hostel to a home.

Overall, Lauryn values how the HSO role allows her to support vulnerable people dismantle the barriers they are facing to find peace and stability. She sees this year’s Winter Project as an opportunity to break the cycle of homelessness in Glasgow that traps people between temporary accommodation and street homelessness. Over the next few months, she is motivated not just to help people find stable accommodation but to give them the tools they need to build a life for themselves. In this way, Lauryn clearly demonstrates how seamlessly the HSO role aligns with the vision guiding all of our work at Glasgow City Mission; to see our city and its’ people flourish and know fullness of life.

Leila Quinney
Trusts and Communications Assistant