At St Martin-in-the-Fields Charity, we prioritise working with frontline workers and funding projects that provide services to support the specific needs of individuals experiencing homelessness.
No two individuals’ experience of homelessness are the same. Each person faces unique challenges which are shaped by their personal circumstances. Factors such as losing a job, a mental health crisis or escaping domestic violence can result in people facing a crisis such as homelessness. These different experiences highlight the need for a tailored approach to support.
At St Martin-in-the-Fields Charity, we prioritise working with frontline workers and funding projects that provide services to support the specific needs of each individual. By focusing on bespoke, dedicated support, we help people not just to find shelter but to rebuild their lives and find long-lasting stability. This dedicated support sets our charity apart.
Before we get started
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What does our homelessness charity do differently?
At St Martins Charity, we are proud to stand alongside every homelessness charity making a meaningful difference in the lives of those experiencing homelessness. Tackling homelessness requires a collective effort, and every organisation involved contributes by providing safety, support, and hope. However, we take a distinct approach by offering a wide range of services and working collaboratively with other organisations to address the unique challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness.
Addressing needs with tailored support
We understand that experiencing homelessness is the same for everyone; the circumstances leading someone to homelessness are often complex and deeply personal. That’s why our approach centres on helping those in crisis with our emergency grants, as well as looking to tackle systemic issues through our larger, multi-year grants to organisations running unique and essential projects that offer individuals safe housing and support services.
Through our varied funding initiatives and partnerships, St Martin’s Charity aims to create a holistic support network, providing funding where it will do the most good. For some, this means providing immediate relief through short-term emergency grants; for others, it involves funding longer-term solutions designed to offer stability and security. No matter the service, the ultimate goal is the same: helping individuals move toward sustainable, long-term stability.
We also work with homelessness frontline workers to understand the complexity and challenges in directly supporting people to find or keep a home, Using the insight they share and the data we collect via the Annual Frontline Workers Survey, we are able to evidence what needs to be done to ensure fewer people experience homelessness,
Short-Term Support: Emergency Grants
St Martin’s Charity provides emergency grants via the Vicar’s Relief Fund (VRF), a lifeline for individuals facing immediate challenges such as eviction or the inability to secure a tenancy. VRF grants can cover essentials like deposits, rent arrears, or essential items needed to move into safe accommodation. These grants are often small but impactful and empower people to take the first steps toward stability while alleviating the urgent, immediate pressures of homelessness.
The VRF provides small crisis grants of up to £350 for preventing eviction and up to £500 to help with accessing accommodation. This emergency financial support is issued in a matter of days and can quickly help bring stability to someone’s life.
But even small donations can have a big impact for people experiencing homelessness. In 2023/24, we awarded 4,508 emergency grants, totalling £1,780,676 to help people with urgent needs. Many of these were for deposits or rent in advance to secure properties, but these included smaller grants such as covering the cost of ID required for housing applications. For some, this relatively small expense, such as the £88.50 required for a passport can be a major barrier to secure housing.
When chef, Osman, was granted refugee status after fleeing persecution, he was evicted from temporary accommodation with no home to go tom a VRF grant paid his first month’s rent in advance on a flat in Plymouth, where he is recovering from his PTSD and cooking meals for the refugee community.
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Long Term Funding: Homelessness charities
Our larger grants help people who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness by funding projects from organisations that offer them safe housing and support services. They are carefully awarded by listening to and learning from the people who work on the frontline, to support promising initiatives that are addressing the root causes and consequences of homelessness. We are also open to funding new ideas and innovative approaches that have the potential to make a positive difference in the lives of homeless people. Our larger grants are given as part of multi-year partnerships that aim to foster long-term collaboration, learning and innovation in the homelessness sector.
We’ve continued to fund six projects through the Frontline Fund, within charities working regionally, across the four nations of the UK, to provide specialist support to people experiencing homelessness. The charities were selected as they were seen to support our vision of everyone having a safe place to call home and the support they need to keep their home.
These charities, with our help, are developing and providing services tackling key issues and challenges facing people experiencing homelessness, such as legal support, counselling, support for young people, including specialised support for trans and non-binary young people, and people who have recently left prison.
Many people who experience homelessness have experienced some form of trauma and therefore may need to seek support to manage their mental health and homelessness.
In 2023, we also established the Mental Health Fund to provide multi-year grants to three organisations to develop innovative specialist and targeted support around mental health and homelessness together with healthcare settings.
Rowan Alba is one of the organisations supported by the Mental Health Fund, which funds its Psychology in Hostels programme. Elvira became homeless after a series of difficult, controlling and abusive relationships left her in debt. Support from Sarah, a Clinical Psychologist in this programme, has helped Elvira to the point where she is looking forward to having her own home.
Support for frontline workers through our Frontline Network
Homelessness can occur due to a range of different factors and in many cases, can result in people experiencing additional challenges as a result of experiencing homelessness as detailed above.
All of this contributes to staff on the frontline of homelessness needing to support people facing increasingly complex challenges, making it more difficult for them to meet the needs of their clients.
Skilled frontline workers are key to people being able to move away from homelessness. So we work with, listen to and champion frontline workers, We learn from them and make informed decisions on where we provide funding and what where we focus the implementation of testing evolving practice for future scale up.
Our annual survey of frontline workers revealed that frontline staff feel that their ability to prevent homelessness has decreased (47%) due to a lack of housing for those in need and an increased demand. There were also examples of of people being turned down for supported accommodation because their needs are seen as ‘too complex’:
“Young Person – mother of three, kids removed into care, living in her car – was declined for supported accommodation … From the email: ‘Her needs are too complex’. Where is she going to find suitable housing if not in supported accommodation?”
Frontline worker, North West England
In addition, nearly half (49%) of staff themselves worry about paying bills, and two-fifths (41%) about housing.
So, we invest in supporting Frontline Workers. Through our frontline network, we offer opportunities to come together to share their knowledge and learn from each other and get involved in activities locally and nationally to influence decision makers.