Crisis planning £2.5m centre for Birmingham homeless

Mar 23 2009 by Edward Chadwick, Birmingham Post

A £2.5million education and skills centre to get homeless people off the streets and into employment could open its doors in Birmingham next year.

The charity Crisis has earmarked a building in Digbeth which it hopes to transform into its third Skylight centre. Although it will not provide residential beds, Crisis chief executive Leslie Morphy said the hub would provide long-term solutions for people sleeping rough or in danger of being forced on to the streets.

The facility will cost £500,000 a year to run and it is hoped to play host to classes in basic literacy and IT as well as vocational workshops in carpentry and car maintenance.

Crisis is in talks with health trusts to allow the centre to provide drug and alcohol clinics.

Mrs Morphy believes the opening of the centre could prove to be especially timely because of an expected rise in the number of people being made homeless by the economic slump.

The charity said that its figures showed that at least 138 people had been forced to sleep rough in Birmingham last year, despite government numbers claiming that just six people were living on the street in the city.

“Official figures don’t show even a fraction of the problem and Birmingham is a city in need of this as much as anywhere in the country,” said Mrs Morphy.

“We won’t be providing beds but rather a medium to long-term strategy to help to change people’s lives.

“It will be a place that will immediately lift their eyes beyond their current horizon and help to inspire them.”

Crisis said that out of 1,300 homeless people who had been through its two centres in London and Newcastle, 563 had achieved qualifications, gone into training or found a job.

A centre in Oxford will be developed along with the Birmingham facility.

The charity hopes to secure the leasehold on a building within weeks and says the redevelopment will take 18 months.

Meanwhile, homeless projects have been handed a £5,000 boost to help cut the number of people sleeping rough on the streets of Birmingham.

Big Issue sellers, a homeless hostel and the Salvation Army are all set to benefit from the funding, which has been awarded by the Birmingham City Centre Partnership’s Change for the Better scheme.

Recipients include the Big Issue Foundation, who have been given £650 to replace magazine vendor’s jackets, and St. Anne’s Hostel, who will use their £750 grant to provide an educational package on practical life skills with Matthew Boulton and Sutton Coldfield Colleges.

Other organisations receiving grants include the Fireside Charity, who were given £900 to provide music lessons.