Housing and Training, All Rolled-Up into One
Latch provides supported housing for people who are homeless or in housing need by purchasing and refurbishing empty and/or rundown houses to bring them back into use as good quality, comfortable homes. They also create opportunities for long term unemployed people to volunteer on the refurbishments, so that they can gain skills and experience to help them to move on to work or further training.
These volunteers are trained by a dedicated Refurbishment and Training Worker who works on the property refurbishments with up to three volunteers per day. Numbers are kept low so that volunteers can be effectively trained and supervised, gaining the skills they need in a personalised environment. Volunteers attend for one to two days per week, for 6 weeks to a year.
Through the CIF, EN:Able Communities provided Latch with a grant of £3921, enabling them to run their volunteer programme for an additional six months. During this time they were able to provide 11 long-term unemployed people with opportunities that allowed them to gain skills, confidence, work experience, Health and Safety training, and CSCS cards.
In addition to providing work experience, the project completed the refurbishment of 7 properties across those six months: all of which were let to homeless people in need of accommodation.
Visit Latch's website to find out more about the great work they do.