Prince William could change homeless charities forever

Prince William is shaking up the homeless sector with bold ambitions to end homelessness.

In June, Prince William announced that his foundation with the Princess of Wales is heading up a new five-year programme aimed at ending homelessness.

The aim of Homewards is simply: make homelessness rare, brief and unrepeated.

A promising idea. And it’s in line with the government’s End rough sleeping for good strategy which promises to make all rough sleeping ‘brief, rare and non-recurring’.

Why is this important?

Now we have powerful and influential organisations working to achieve a long fought-for goal. It’s this kind of backing that could make the end of rough sleeping a reality.

But this isn’t all. Prince William has brought a positive conversation on homelessness to a national, and possibly international, stage. This is something we have been promoting for years and it’s great to see support grow.

This mixture of resources, awareness and good intentions could mark a huge leap forward for the homeless sector as all sides of society are being encouraged to really think about their role in ending homelessness for good.

Ending homelessness and Prince William: what will this look like?

This is what we know about Homewards so far:

The project aims to work with six local areas to get to the heart of the issues faced in each area and offer transformative collaboration with local services. Currently, these include: Northern Ireland, Aberdeen, Sheffield, Newport, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (grouped into one area) and Lambeth

Homewards has and continues to work with industry experts from across the globe, and people with lived experience, to understand the parts of homelessness that often go unnoticed. At The Connection, we’ve been working to do this with our Theory of Change

Clearly, Prince Williams’ project is an ambitious one, and we’re keen to see how it progresses over the next five years.

What’s next?

Although we are not directly involved in this project, we believe it will champion our shared view that homelessness is a collective issue that everyone has a stake in resolving.

The Connection will be following the project closely to see how it succeeds and, if suitable, how we could support it. We wish Prince William the best of luck in his mission to make homelessness rare, brief and unrepeated and are thankful for his contribution to our sector.