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Tyneside Cyrenians win Charity of the Year Award

On 18th September, there was great cause for celebration as Tyneside Cyrenians, who run an ACE pilot in Newcastle, swept to victory in the Charity Times Charity Awards, winning Charity of the Year, 2008.

The award is in recognition of their wide range of work with homeless people, including the user-led ACE pilot that engages with people who are street-homeless with multiple problems.

Attending the award ceremony were Neil Baird (second from the left) and Ollie Batchelor (second from the right) who represent the Cyrenians on the ACE Collaborative Board.

Nick O'Shea, the ACE programme manager, was kindly invited along to the ceremony by the Cyrenians.

Although ACE has been operating in Newcastle for a relatively short period of time, there have already been a number of achievements.

A new model: Although outreach is by no means a new model of intervention, ACE has developed its own unique style of assertive outreach which knows the places that many of the disengaged individuals frequent, tracks individuals down, engages with them and ensures that many more actually do engage with services. Clients' circumstances and locations change quickly. Going to prison, being evicted, or getting red-flagged can all cause service users to disappear from the radar of multiple agencies. The ACE “search and outreach” provision has plugged a gap in services across the city – all existing services which help with aspects of excluded people's needs are centre based. ACE has been successful because it has provided a much needed outreach arm for homelessness, drug and alcohol, offending and mental health services.

More than a signposting: What has also worked particularly well is the ACE philosophy of “refer and accompany.” This is a central part of the model because we know that referral and signposting alone does not work for this group of individuals. ACE supports people into services and stays with them for as long as it takes to get them (and keep them) fully engaged

Former Clients as Workers: Although the employment of individuals who have been through homelessness or drug and alcohol treatment services was not new to Tyneside Cyrenians, there was a degree of risk in employing a team of five workers none of whom had any previous full-time work experience in health and social care, and all of them with first hand experience of social exclusion and use of the helping services. One year on it is something of a triumph for them and the organisation that the same team is still together. The value of first hand experience has been born out in several ways:

1. They have engaged and built productive rapport with those who were outside the reach of existing services
2. They have known the places frequented those who are socially excluded and understood their movements enabling them to be very effective in locating and tracking them down.
3. They have been able to understand the clients’ reluctance to engage and the barriers to change but their own experience has taught them that change is possible meaning that they have persevered where others might have given up.

For further information on the Tyneside Cyrenians, please contact Ollie Batchelor on o.batchelor@tcuk.org.

Many Congratulations to the Tyneside Cyrenians on their award!