Alice Manning
On 23 August, London-based social enterprise Change Please, announced plans to repurpose three London buses to offer essential health services for rough sleepers and vulnerable homeless people.
The initiative, Driving for Change, was launched to coincide with World Homeless Day on 10 October, and involves Change Please working with sponsors HSBC, Colgate and Mastercard to provide homeless people with free, essential services. Including, onboard GP consultations and dentist appointments, showers, and haircuts.
Driving for Change aims to enable homeless people to make changes to their lives supported by others, with founder, Cemal Ezel, emphasising that the key aim of the enterprise is to instil “sustainable approaches to ending homelessness”.
Currently two of three buses are running; the third is expected to focus on mental health services.
Backed by Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Driving for Change will run for at least two years from its launch, with buses expected to be running in Manchester from next year.
Khan praised the work of Change Please in a tweet, describing the launch of Driving for Change as “[a] humbling story of how access to services and employment can help people experiencing homelessness move on with their lives.”
Change Please also runs a coffee business, training homeless people as baristas in their in-house academy while supporting them with “housing, personal finance and therapy support and crucially, onward employment”.
Impacts on Homelessness
The initiative launches following the warning from housing charity, Crisis, that 100,000 renting households will be forced into homelessness by the government’s decision to remove the £20 uplift to universal credits.
With The Big Issue reporting that 130,000 households are set to be made homeless as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is little doubt that long-term solutions are needed to combat homelessness in the UK.
However, with research from Crisis suggesting that the British public “lacks a robust understanding of the concept of prevention”, it remains to be seen just how widespread support for such schemes will be going into the future.
Featured image courtesy of Paul Fiedler via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
Alice Manning
Alice is an English and History graduate of the University of York. She is interested in investigating the issues that matter to contemporary society through features, current affairs pieces and reviews. Away from writing, she is a keen musician and occasional baker.