Wintercomfort is sharing some of the lessons that have been learned during the project so that others can can replicate and improve on these activities.
About the project
‘Do It Yourself’ provides those in Cambridge with a history of homelessness and who require support to sustain their tenancy, training in how to undertake basic gardening and household DIY tasks in order to make their house a home. Those with an aptitude and interest can develop their skills further by undertaking a placement which includes vocational training in carpentry, gardening or decorating whilst gaining work experience providing maintenance services to local housing associations.
The differences for learners
This project seeks to combat the cycle of homelessness by supporting those at risk of losing their tenancy to create a home. The project is designed to give confidence, practical DIY and gardening skills to those who have had a history of homelessness within Cambridge. It works to help service users to sustain their tenancies by supporting them to turn their new accommodation into a home by personalising it with shelves and curtains or by growing their own vegetables. The project also provides a pathway to training and employment by providing voluntary placements within Wintercomfort and our partner housing associations. The placements will include embedded accredited vocational learning delivered in partnership with Cambridge Regional College and will include credible work experience creating employment opportunities for those with the capability and interest to undertake more advanced building and gardening maintenance activities.
The differences which were not predicted
The project had an overall positive impact on service users’ self-esteem and personal well being; this ranged from just motivating some chaotic service users to spend some of their time proactively to those more capable fully engaging and securing employment.
Although clients participated in both gardening and DIY, the interest in DIY was lower than expected. The process of examination of the DIY sessions and its failings helped to guide the future direction of Wintercomfort's new social enterprise away from a building maintenance focus and towards a cleaning model. With further funding from CLIF this has been developed further, with their Social Enterprise Manager visiting other cleaning social enterprises developing a business plan and applying for start-up funding from the Local Enterprise Partnership.