Single Persons Homelessness Service - St Johns Mansions

The Council is seeking to procure a specialist support provider, with a demonstrable successful track record of running similar services, to provide high-level accommodation-based support for residents with a history of rough sleeping who also have multiple and complex needs. The service provider will be based onsite offering 24-hour cover, including waking night support. They will have experience of creating Psychologically Informed Environments (PIE) with the requisite support systems in place to enable residents to thrive and the service to achieve positive outcomes.

The project is being supported through the Greater London Authority's 2022-2025 Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP), with both capital and revenue funding secured. It is intended to act as next stage move on accommodation from a number of existing short stay services to help address rough sleeping and homelessness not only within in Islington, but also the wider sub-region, with 50% of the beds being made available to our North London partners (London Boroughs of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Westminster City Council) for the period of the revenue grant availability.

The accommodation will be 19 self-contained studio flats in a newly refurbished building owned by Islington Council. It will specifically seek to provide a 'bridge' from rough sleeping and living in shared supported emergency accommodation and first stage hostels, towards independent living, offering support to enable residents to acquire the skills and resilience needed to move on positively.

This project will offer residents an 18 - 24 month stay, supporting them to link in with personalised support relevant to their respective needs/goals and will support residents to consolidate their independent living skills. There will need to be a key focus on tenancy management, including supporting residents to engage with and maintain engagement with support services, budgeting, self-care, cooking, building confidence and resilience, and making safe connections with others.

The project will offer a welcoming reception area, staff office, key-working rooms and communal space, which will allow staff to deliver high levels of personalised support to the residents, through structured interventions, as well as brief, opportunistic engagement support delivered through one-to-one key-working sessions, communal/group activities and in-reach satellite services from relevant agencies which will be arranged by the provider, including but not limited to: health, drug and alcohol support and psychological in-reach.

In order to deliver this service, the support provider will be expected to recruit experienced and knowledgeable staff who are able to work with people described as 'hard to reach', using relational and creative ways to build meaningful relationships with residents. The service will be underpinned by a PIE and will have direct input from either a psychologist or psychotherapist.