We first met Aurel five years ago. He was struggling with homelessness and looking for support in finding a job.

Aurel had a lot of work experience odd jobs but he hadn’t found a job that he was really passionate about and this led him to change roles often. This made him feel housing insecure and unable to plan for the future.

In 2019, Aurel decided it was time for a change.

Meeting us: job support

He decided to move to England when a friend promised him a stable job in Manchester. However, things didn’t go to plan and Aurel moved to London in search of employment; after a period of rough sleeping, he was found by The Connection’s outreach team.

From here, our team member Marina met with Aurel to support him through English language lessons as well as workplace skills. Because of this, he earned a Food Safety Level 1 certificate.

These interventions helped him to secure a job in the hospitality industry as a Kitchen Porter and a room in a house share; things were looking up.

Then, like many people, Auriel lost his job overnight due to the pandemic. We acted quickly and offered him secure accommodation in one of our ‘Covid Hotels’ for about three months.

Once the pandemic subsided, we helped Auriel get back on his feet again, securing more hospitality work.

This new job helped him discover his passion for cooking. Auriel decided that he wanted to develop his culinary skills to progress his career and give his life a bit more direction.

However, at this time Aurel was still struggling with renting and often found himself sleeping rough again. This housing insecurity prevented him from sustaining his jobs for long enough to develop a career.

Next steps

It’s clear that Aurel’s journey out of homelessness was going to be long and complicated, but we never gave up on him.

As Marina says,

“After losing another job in January 2024, Aurel and I sat down together to see how we could change this. Aurel said he felt that as long as he had low-skill, low-paid jobs he did not have the means to afford a secure place to live and was forced to take up offers of precarious accommodation that would inevitably fall through continuing the vicious circle of sleeping rough and being unable to sustain a job.”

Luckily, The Connection is good at building connections.

One of our partners, Only Pavement Away (OAPA), is a charity founded by representatives from the hospitality industry who believe that everyone deserves the chance to find and forge a career. We have referred several people to OAPA for training, workshops, job fairs and to access job opportunities directly. Marina put Aurel in touch with the OAPA team as well as Westminster Employment Services.

It took some patience, encouragement and a fresh suit from Marina before Aurel felt ready to apply for more challenging and better-paid roles in his job search. But with our support, Aurel smashed his first interview and is now working as a Breakfast Chef in a prestigious London hotel.

Out of homelessness and unemployment

This was almost 3 months ago and during this time Aurel has settled into the job.

In his own words:

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