Homelessness prevention: Focus on young women's housing and support pathways
By Esther Sample, 4 August 2021
Fellow's Profile
Esther Sample
Fellow's Profile
Esther Sample
Homelessness prevention: focus on young women's housing and support pathways
Fellowship
- Themes
- Focus
-
Securing housing for homeless young women that is gender and situation sensitive
- Countries
- Fellowship year
-
2018
- Supported by
- Locality
-
London
Contact
Biography
I am Director of the charity Home-Start London which is a network of home-visiting and community services working to deliver and strengthen support for families with young children across London.
My Churchill Fellowship in 2018 focused on prevention and support for women experiencing homelessness in Canada, Finland and Sweden. This was an issue I felt strongly about, having worked in homelessness and seen women continually failed by a complicated and often male-dominated system.
On my visits, I saw services that were tailored to women's needs and recognised the trauma they had experienced. On my return, this learning fed into the London housing reciprocal scheme for women and families fleeing abuse I had set up and managed at Safer London, which was a winner of the London Homelessness Awards 2018. I then worked as Research Lead at the Young Women's Trust and ran a national event on young women's housing to disseminate my learning further. Following this, at One Small Thing I drew heavily on my Fellowship findings to explore how the justice system can better recognise and respond to women's trauma, and provide alternatives to prison which includes safe housing.
In my current role, the community-led support for mum’s and families delivered by Home-Start’s across London strongly reflects the best practice examples I wrote about in my research, providing flexible peer-led support that can truly prevent homelessness. Home-Start as a model was founded by Margaret Harrison CBE (1938-2015), a Churchill Fellow in the early 1970’s who researched family support in America, so it’s a real honour to combine my Churchill research to grow and strengthen this work in London.
Ideas
Activity
Preventing young women’s homelessness
By Esther Sample, 13 May 2019
Disclaimer
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
Ideas
Homelessness prevention: Focus on young women's housing and support pathways
By Esther Sample, 4 August 2021
Activity
Preventing young women’s homelessness
By Esther Sample, 13 May 2019
Disclaimer
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
