1.     What is your relationship to the Church?

 Anchor House is formerly the Apostleship of the Sea, a Catholic Charity.  Anchor House East London is a new charity with a new constitution modelled on a modern social welfare charity, but retaining its Catholic values for alleviating poverty and suffering.

2.     What type of referrals do you take?

 We accept adults, both men and women aged 20 or over, who are considered medium to high risk.  This means they have many problems usually including uncontrollable drug or alcohol problems, or are extremely vulnerable for other reasons and need to work on many issues until they are ready to accept help and move-on.

3.     Where do they come from?

 Our referrals come from Newham’s Housing Options Team, as well as Housing Services, Probation Services, Prisons and night shelters.

4.     How long do they stay with you?

 In practice this is between 9-15 months although, with the development of the Aspirations Programme and Outcome Star assessment framework, the process is speeding up.

5.     Is there a maximum stay?

 No.  Individuals can take as long as they need to ensure that they are ready to move-on with minimal risk of returning to the streets.  As above, people are now receiving more one-to one support to identify and overcome deep and protracted problems. 

6.     Why are there not more women?

 Traditionally, Anchor House was a male environment for seafarers.  Today though, the majority of referrals for hostel accommodation are men.  This is because single homeless women have more options on referral often due to children, which gives them statutory rights to housing or other reasons such as needing a non-male environment for a while.

7.     Why do you need charitable funding?

 Because government funding, via local authorities, is not enough to provide the specialist services that are needed to really address the problems that people face before they can start to move-on through training and employment initiatives.  Charitable funding ensures Anchor House retains its independence to challenge government policy and campaign for more intelligent funding for housing services for vulnerable adults.

8.     How do I know my money will be well spent?

 Anchor House is a registered charity and has to meet rigorous audit requirements.  The new charity will also be a limited company with increased regulation and reporting requirements.  Its accounts are a public record and the Board of Trustees have a legal duty to spend charitable funds prudently and according to donors’ wishes where these are explicit.

9.     What happens to your unrestricted income?

 Unrestricted income is used to make provision for unforeseen circumstances such as the loss of a major funder or income stream and also as an investment reserve to help generate income or fund new projects or initiatives.  The trustees have to report annually on their reserves policy under charity accounting rules.

10.  What do people do during the day?

 The Aspirations Programme provides a range of developmental activities to help people improve their physical and mental health, learn to look after themselves, learn new skills essential for independence and wellbeing, training programmes, job skills development help to find employment.  Over 95% of residents are involved in some form of positive activity.

11.  Do they have a choice of activities?

 Yes.  Each person will develop their own plan of action with staff support.

12.  Why do people find it so hard to break out of homelessness?

 The reasons that lead to people becoming homeless are usually the result of something going fundamentally wrong in their lives.  They have often lost much more than a home and feel isolated, depressed and have very low self-esteem and very little confidence.  They may also be in denial about their ability to cope, particularly if they have acquired a drug or alcohol problem.  Due to prejudice and stigma attached to homelessness, people find it very much harder to get a job or find a tenancy.  They may have lost their papers to prove their identity, have poor credit ratings, no bank account and no references.  There is also a well known “benefits trap” which makes it very hard to progress from benefits to fully paid employment when the first jobs are likely to be part time and or very poorly paid.     

13.  What do you call your service users?

 By their names on a day to day basis, but collectively they may be referred to variously as clients, residents or service users.

14.  What are you doing that is different from other homeless charities?

 We actively strive to move people on and into paid employment with their own tenancies.  We do this through the Aspirations Programme which we developed in consultation with our residents.  As part of this process we foster a spirit of respect and responsibility and encourage residents to help and mentor each other.  We also offer employment and volunteering opportunities within Anchor House which promotes self-esteem, skills development and confidence.  We provide facilities for external work based training providers who offer training and qualifications in construction, catering and customer services.  We monitor and evaluate all our activities in a continual quest for improvement.