Justlife Foundation has been awarded a five-year Reaching Communities grant from the Big Lottery Fund, enabling the charity to expand its work amongst vulnerably housed people in Brighton & Hove. The £480k project will commence in Spring 2014.The strategic plan includes the development of a collaboration between Pathway, St John Ambulance and Brighton Homeless Healthcare, which has been established through the PathwayPlus Homeless Hospital Discharge Project which Justlife been piloting since October 2013. This development will also enable Justlife to expand drop-in services, which have been running in the city since September 2012.This Reaching Communities grant will enable Justlife to establish a team in Brighton and create some new services for those who are living in unsupported temporary accommodation.Gary Bishop, Founder and CEO of Justlife said: “This is a great opportunity to build on more than five years of experience of working with those in unsupported temporary accommodation in both Manchester and Brighton. Since arriving in Brighton in 2012 we have been able to add our skills to the other excellent services working in Brighton and Hove and build partnerships to develop and deliver services that are really working, such as the PathwayPlus hospital discharge project.”“Living in unsupported temporary accommodation is too often an extremely difficult time and we have often seen life take a turn for the worse for people during the uncertainty and waiting. But with this funding we are hoping to change this story for the better. This Reaching Communities grant enables us to further support vulnerable people living in unsupported temporary accommodation. We are hugely excited about the award of this grant and looking forward to working with the Big Lottery Fund once again on this project.”Justlife Foundation is a charity which supports adults who are homeless, vulnerably housed or living in temporary accommodation. The organisation started five years ago when a small group of Manchester residents started a pilot project providing a weekly meal to people living in emergency accommodation. In 2011 the charitable foundation was formed and the success of the initial pilot led to the opening of our Health and Enterprise Centre in Openshaw, East Manchester, which still runs today. In September 2012, Justlife started a weekly drop in, serving food and offering basic advice with a Big Lottery Awards for All grant and funds raised through 14 people running the Brighton marathon for Justlife. Identifying the need, Justlife took the helm in developing and delivering the PathwayPlus programme, discharging homeless people from hospital into Temporary Accommodation and plays a central role in Brighton & Hove working with this client group.Alison Rowe, Big Lottery Fund spokesperson, said: “In order to encourage a positive and long term transition from homelessness, it is so important that support is coordinated to help with a wide range of issues such as health, career prospects, housing and benefits. With that focus, I am pleased we are awarding a grant to Justlife today, for a project which aims to expand and create a host of services for vulnerable people.”
