Innovations

We pride ourselves on constantly reviewing and adapting our services to meet our clients' aspirations, drawing on their experiences to make improvements and refinements.

Sometimes this means doing the unexpected or trying something completely new. We have a history of taking on challenges, and our hunger for innovation has not diminished. These are just a few of our innovations: -

  • We led the way in introducing needle exchanges and on site prescribing to hostels in 2003. Our on-site prescribing service won the Care Trust Award for most innovative new service. Click here to read more.
  • We began providing housing advice in prisons in the year 2000. Our housing advice workers prevented 250 people from becoming homeless and provided advice to a further 1,000 people in HMP Pentonville in our first 18 months of operation.
  • We opened the first hostel for older rough sleepers in 1997, and gave it a night centre in 2003, enabling our street outreach teams to introduce older, more entrenched rough sleepers gradually to the project.
  • We launched Putting Down Roots in 2001 - giving homeless men and women the opportunity to learn gardening and landscaping skills and work towards qualifications, whilst working on community spaces around London
  • We opened our South London Sex Worker Project in 2002 to work with vulnerable and homeless sex-working women addicted to crack. Click here to read more.