Member Spotlight: Oasis Community Housing
Date published:
Who are you?
Oasis Community Housing
Where can we find you?
Gateshead
How many people do you employ?
100 employees across our head office and homeless services
In a nutshell, tell us about your business…
Oasis Community Housing is a UK charity that supports people experiencing homelessness. We address both the immediate needs and root causes of homelessness for almost 2,000 people every year; through crisis intervention for rough sleepers, supported housing projects, a unique residential project for mums and babies who need intensive help to stay together, aid for women living with the effects of domestic abuse and programmes that work with those furthest from the job market. As a Christian charity, we exist to reignite hope and offer a future to everyone facing homelessness.
What has been your top tip for keeping business going during Covid-19?
Being agile.
This year’s lockdowns removed the ability to deliver drop-in services, one of any homelessness charity’s pillars of crisis support for rough sleepers.
The first lockdown also saw the rollout of the national Government scheme ‘Everyone In’, which aimed to ensure all rough sleepers were moved into temporary accommodation. However, there were repercussions for those thrust off the streets and into hotels without the support they needed to cope.
Our staff had to very quickly redesign support services to overcome these new challenges. Practically, this meant establishing a floating support team across the North East to work within an unchartered, fast-changing framework.
What we were able to achieve was supporting 280 people in their new accommodation. We worked with partners to make sure that every single one of these individuals moved on successfully from their temporary accommodation into a more permanent one; we delivered emergency food and sanitary parcels; we made over 200 referrals to our partner agencies; and delivered almost 1,700 support sessions.
The willingness and adeptness of our dedicated team to quickly change their way of working was a key factor in us being able to continue delivering support to those who needed it, when its most needed.
What are the benefits of being a Chamber member?
The strength of our partnerships is vital to the delivery of our life-line services for homeless people across the region. Whether that is through multi-agency working, food parcels and other gifts-in-kind or generous financial donations, the Chamber offers the perfect forum to build on those relationships.