April 20, 2006

A new education centre is offering homeless people a chance to learn in a more informal environment, reports Katie Toms

Jamie Williams left school at 16 to do a City and Guilds apprenticeship in mechanical engineering. But he began to drink heavily and drifted from job to job. He later qualified as a social worker, but his drinking was still causing problems and he has been single, jobless and homeless for over a year.

After an outreach group referred him to a Salvation Army hostel, he found out about the Skylight activities centre run by the homeless charity Crisis. The Skylight centre has been running for four years, offering 50 different activities, from tai chi to IT. This week a new education centre, the Learning Zone, was added to the facilities, offering formal structured learning.

Now 49, Jamie enrolled on a personal development course and found the Learning Zone less overwhelming than mainstream education. “When I did my City and Guilds at college, I walked in and felt lost. Here you walk in and there is someone to see you. You don’t get turned away. You don’t feel intimidated.”

The Crisis Learning Zone offers free courses and learning support at its head office in Commercial Street, East London. A pilot scheme has trained 101 homeless people since last September, and currently has a waiting list of 32 people. Courses last six weeks with a maximum of 12 people on each course. Modules range from “soft-life skills” such as confidence-building to basic English, numeracy and IT training in word processing and administration skills. Three teachers are trained to tailor courses to a wide range of individual needs.

Speaking at the launch of the centre, former Labour education minister Baroness Blackstone said, “Not everybody wants to go to a further education college and fit in a formal environment. Crisis is providing a much more informal environment with a range of different opportunities which will allow people if they want to, to progress on to something more formal.”

Despite its successful and pioneering work, over 90 per cent of funding for the centre has come from charitable sources. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) contributed £120,000, but Crisis’ chief executive, Shaks Ghosh, is concerned that education for homeless people is not a government priority.

“Government and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) are not bringing learning to excluded and vulnerable people. It requires substantially more funding for charities and voluntary organisations like ourselves who have the contact with this client group to make it happen,” she said.

The numerous white papers and reviews on education in the pipeline are in danger of ignoring those who are already excluded. “The refocus on education is fantastic for the whole country, but all of these reforms will fail if they only focus on young people and employers needs. Education as a way of moving people out of exclusion is not really on the government agenda. They are only concerned with getting people to work and productivity,” Ghosh warns.

The issue of homeless education is far more complex than training people to be work-ready. Most homeless people don’t have the skills to return to education, let alone work. A spokesperson for the LSC said the agency has worked with homeless sector organisations since 2002 to ensure learning opportunities exist, but it seems this is not enough.

Sophie Livingstone, the head of communications and policy at the Foyer Federation, which campaigns on behalf of young homeless people, shares Ghosh’s frustration. “These people are not capable of going back into training. They need skills to walk back through that door into education, but there is an issue of funding this type of course. Drawing down that money from the LSC has been difficult. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is not taking any responsibility, so homeless education is falling between the DWP and the Department for Education and Skills (DFES).”

But are homeless people really not being provided for? Both the DWP and the DFES refer enquiries on education and homelessness to the ODPM, which points to its homelessness strategy and associated projects. The department says it is “working closely with government agencies, business and the voluntary sector to ensure that our work focuses on the needs of the individual.”

As well as part-funding the Crisis Learning Zone, another £3m has been earmarked for similar pilots and projects for the coming year. Some £90m is also being provided to renovate hostels and day centres. But the main focus still seems to be on employment rather than education.

Confidence and skills to learn are not the only difficulties homeless people face with regard to education. Livingstone is also concerned about those who want to move on to higher education. The first obstacle is applying for student loans, which is impossible as homeless people have no permanent address or contact with family. Another barrier is the loss of benefit and income support.

Relief came for students last week, when it was announced that income from university bursaries and the £2,700 special support grant will not disqualify students from claiming housing benefit. But if you are studying more than 16 hours a week you cannot claim this benefit, or the Job Seekers’ Allowance.

The 16-hour rule is indicative of the wider problems faced by homeless people, as Ghosh explains. “It’s about the whole poverty trap. If you are living in a hostel in London and the rent is £200 or £300 a week and the minimum wage is £180 a week, the only way you can live is by being on benefits. Very often it starts with skills. If you have a very poor skills set you can’t work, then you have a housing problem, then you are stuck on benefits.”

For the lucky few who can train at the Crisis Learning Zone, support and encouragement is available for them to study on free courses for less than 16 hours a week. Ghosh says, “We want to teach people to dream again, to restore the ‘wow factor’ in their lives. A lot of homeless people have completely dead-end lives. We are trying to bring life and energy and positive thinking to help them on their journey out of homelessness.”

Back at Crisis headquarters, Jamie is showing visitors around the new centre. He currently works in Crisis’s Skylight cafe, and hopes this will lead to permanent employment. “It is a shame that there are no other places like here. I’ve recommended it to other guys. You come here and it is brilliant. I didn’t feel intimidated because I got such a warm welcome by everyone.” — Dawn/Guardian Service

 

Clarification This is with reference to your article ‘The rave and rant of life’ by Adil Ahmad (The Review, March 30 – April 5). I was quoted as saying the following: “When I put this question to Farooq Tariq, the General Secretary of the Labour Party of Pakistan, he countered that the organisers had paid one million rupees to the City Government for the use of the premises.” I did say that to Adil Ahmad. I had the wrong information at the time. I have checked with the organisers of the WSF and the actual fact is that all the entire cost of the tents, halls and other arrangements in the WSF has been paid by the WSF organising committee but no money has been paid to the local government for using the Sports Complex. Kindly print this correction. Farooq Tariq General Secretary Labour Party Pakistan

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