Crossing the threshold to independence
Threshold specialises in helping people at risk of homelessness overcome the many issues that might prevent them maintaining their independence
Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach them how to fish and you feed them for a lifetime. That, in metaphor, summarises the work of Threshold.
The organisation started life 30 years ago in Oldham to provide support for homeless people, helping them regain the skills and confidence to step into independent living. Since those days, the organisation has grown beyond Oldham, into Tameside and Stockport; and more with a new service that reaches across Greater Manchester. Their clear remit of supporting people into independent living has remained.
Much of Threshold’s funding comes from Supporting People contracts; and in helping people to get back into independent living, or to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place, means the organisation has to address a complex range of issues. Among the people it works with are young single parents, young people leaving care, people with substance misuse issues, and ex-offenders.
“We provide services in accommodation owned by housing associations,” said director Steve Goslyn. “We’ve been occupying some housing association buildings for quite a number of years, so while they are the overall landlord, we do virtually everything on their behalf, such as collecting the rent, re-letting vacant properties and so on. We work in partnership with each party playing to their strengths.”
To help it continue to deliver existing and improved services, Threshold recently moved into a brand new office in Oldham town centre, close to many of the housing advice, homelessness, employment and training agencies with whom it works. At the same time, it has modernised its IT infrastructure.
The company teamed up with Probado to do this, shifting from a set up whereby staff had to share mainly standalone PCs to an externally hosted server with terminals for each member of staff. The company manages and maintains the system on Threshold’s behalf, with staff able to access the system from officebased PCs, or remotely from the sites where they work or even home PCs, enabling remote working.
“Because we’re a relatively small charity we didn’t want to do this ourselves, so we partnered with Probado, which essentially provides a managed service for us,” Goslyn said. “We do what we’re good at, which is providing the support services, and they do what they’re good at, which is keeping the IT system running. It means that we can be much more flexible in how we respond and much more accessible to the outside world.”
A similar approach was adopted with the purchase of a specialist housing management software system developed by Sysaro Systems Ltd. The housing management package is specially designed for organisations like Threshold as it enables a full range of support activities to be recorded and reported on as well as traditional housing management information.
With an already well established website – www.thp.org.uk – developed by social business Digital Umbrella, part of High Peak CVS, Threshold has a great array of information technology solutions to support service delivery.
The upgrade to its IT capabilities provides an example of how Threshold works in partnership with other organisations, combining its own strengths with those of others. It’s something the organisation is looking to do much more of in the future, as the Greater Manchester Offenders Project (GMOP), one of its new endeavours, demonstrates.
Threshold is working with New Charter Housing Group to deliver the service, working with people leaving prison to help them into settled housing. Further down the line, the service, which starts in January, hopes to tie up with other partners to help the client group with employment and training related issues as a measure to help with their rehabilitation.
“There’s a massive need out there, particularly amongst people who have been in prison for a short period, who get very little in terms of statutory support. Quite often they end up insecurely housed, breaking the law again and going back to prison,” Goslyn said. “What we want to do is work with other organisations to break this ‘revolving door’, because a lot of research tells us that if someone has got a safe place of their own – their own keys, their own front door – then they are less likely to return to offending.
“The interventions that we carry out with people are in many ways preventative, helping to stop people’s problems becoming worse and helping to put them back on a positive path,” Goslyn said. “It’s an exciting and rewarding area of work. Essentially what we are trying to do is help people get back on their feet through their own efforts.”
