Current Partners
Excellent Development
Excellent Development is one of the charities supported by the Andrews Charitable Trust. They support farmers in Africa to gain access to clean water and grow enough food to eat and sell.
The projects themselves are carried out by community groups who come together to improve food and water supplies by building sand dams, terracing land and planting trees.
The Bristol Housing Partnership
ACT’s main programme from August 2009 – March 2012 has been a pilot programme in the city of Bristol entitled ”Tackling Homelessness Across the Generations”. This is a pilot project looking at how better family and parenting support and more coordinated partnerships between services can help families with an experience of homelessness and give better chances to their children.
As a pilot project, the intention of this programme is to gather evidence and to share the experience of our funded partners both within Bristol and more widely. We would be interested to hear from any organisations, working in Bristol or in other areas, that are also contributing to this field.
Five voluntary sector service providers in Bristol are being supported by ACT to deliver key services and to some of the most vulnerable homeless families in the city. Working together and with several departments of the city council, the pilot project hopes to develop a better understanding of how to improve outcomes for parents and their children.
The main partners in this programme are as follows:
Single Parent Action Network (SPAN)
SPAN is a nation-wide umbrella organisation set up to develop partnerships with key agencies to improve policies and services for one parent families and supports parents living in poverty and isolation to strengthen and empower themselves. ACT is supporting SPAN to run their Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities Parenting Programme for groups of parents with experience of homelessness.
The programme enhances family relationships, cultural values, and positive discipline, enabling parents to develop a range of strategies in supporting positive outcomes for children. SPAN is also coordinating the ACT Homelessness and Parenting Programme in Bristol assisting with enhancing partnership working and monitoring change. They will also take a lead role in hosting events for shared learning and dissemination of the pilot’s experience.
ACT is also supporting SPAN by paying for a Father Worker to specifically provide key worker support to vulnerable teenage dads – many of whom are experiencing complex problems including homelessness.
Shelter
Shelter is the most well known homelessness agency in the UK. In Bristol, the Keys to the Future programme has pioneered a more holistic key worker approach to working with homeless families that aims to tackle non-tenancy related problems as well as housing issues.
ACT is supporting them by paying for an “Intensive Family Support Worker” that is able to work with the most complex and vulnerable families for longer and in a more in-depth way.
Survive
Survive has been providing services for women and children affected by domestic violence and abuse (DVA) in South Gloucestershire and Bristol for over 30 years.
ACT is covering project and associated costs of a Parenting Support Worker to focus on family work with vulnerable families. This key worker will build skills in parenting and promote positive family relationships and will work across our referral, refuge and resettlement team to provide a holistic approach.
Community Resolve
Community Resolve is a community-led organisation, focusing on conflict transformation, working with community and youth conflict using a variety of different approaches including training, groupwork, 1-1 support and mentoring as well as other community interventions. ACT is supporting their Crucial Conversations pilot project, which aims to prevent young people becoming homeless by providing mediation at the point of crisis, using peer and adult mediators working together.