Budapest Methodological Centre of Social Policy and Its Institutions
Hungary
BMSZKI is the largest provider of services for homeless people in Budapest. It offers a wide range of services to single adults as well as couples and families with children (outreach, day centres, night shelters, temporary hostels, health services, job centres, etc.) in 20 different locations since 1993. It also runs two large-scale projects aimed at providing integrated housing solutions for homeless people. The first offers housing and floating support for people leaving shelters and hostels, whilst the second targets rough sleepers. Through its Training and Policy Department,
BMSZKI runs a number of training programmes and is responsible for training approximately 150 professional staff working in the social sector in Budapest and the Central Hungarian region each year. The training ranges from a few hour-long workshops to an eight-day intense training course and local and national conferences that are all open to staff working for other homeless service providers, and in some cases, other social services in Hungary.
BMSZKI has been involved in innovative projects targeting the integrated housing needs of homeless people for about ten years and have carried out monitoring activities for similar larger projects in Budapest as well as nationally. We have incorporated the lessons learnt from these projects into our training activities within Hungary, but the transnational aspect of housing has so far been lacking. BMSZKI sent colleagues working with people experiencing homelessness and housing exclusion to various European cities in previous lifelong learning programs.
Casa Ioana
Romania
Casa Ioana is a domestic abuse and family homelessness charity working in Bucharest, Romania and has become the city’s leading provider of temporary accommodation and specialist support. On any given day, they support 20 families and 9 women.
Casa Ioana meets the particular needs of families and individuals over an extended period and work with a broad network of both public-sector agencies and other service providers to help women and children resolve problems and acquire the necessary skills and assistance they need to regain family stability and affordable housing. The aim is to address the multiple underlying issues of domestic violence and family homelessness, rather than simply focusing on providing short-term emergency shelter.
The family accommodation centres provide temporary accommodation and support services and beneficiaries are expected to work with the psychosocial support team and plan towards self-dependency.
Although Casa Ioana provides its psychosocial support to women and children who live outside the centres, they do not provide accommodation without the psychosocial support package.
Casa Ioana provides comprehensive services that keep the family together whilst placing emphasis on empowering individuals: a process by which people are supported to take control of their daily lives and exercise choice.
Empowerment means our beneficiaries have the authority to take decisions in matters relating to themselves, in relation to their daily lives and in connection to their self-development.
Casa Ioana’s staff team has an accumulated 36 years’ experience in social exclusion and homelessness as well as 32 years’ experience in dealing with domestic violence.
FEANTSA
EU
FEANTSA, the European Federation of National Organisations working with the Homeless, was established in 1989 as a European non-governmental organisation to prevent and alleviate the poverty and social exclusion of people threatened by or living in homelessness. FEANTSA currently has more than 130 member organisations, working in close to 30 European countries, including 25 EU Member States.
Most of FEANTSA’s members are national or regional umbrella organisations of service providers that support homeless people with a wide range of services, including housing, health, employment and social support. They often work in close co-operation with public authorities, social housing providers and other relevant actors. Many of them carry out a range of training and capacity building activities, including CVET. FEANTSA works closely with the EU institutions, and has consultative status at the Council of Europe and the United Nations. It receives financial support from the European Commission.
FEANTSA is committed to:
- Engage in constant dialogue with the European institutions and national and regional governments to promote the development and implementation of effective measures to fight homelessness.
- Conducting and disseminating research and data collection to promote better understanding of the nature, extent, causes of, and solutions to, homelessness.
- Promoting and facilitating the exchange of information, experience and good practice between FEANTSA’s member organisations and relevant stakeholders with a view to improve policies and practices addressing homelessness. This includes training and capacity building activities.
- Raise public awareness about the complexity of homelessness and the multidimensional nature of the problems faced by homeless people.
FEANTSA is recognised as a centre of expertise on homeless policies and services, both within Europe and internationally. It can thus make a unique contribution to the project in terms of providing a European and transnational perspectives.
FEANTSA has a broad, international network of stakeholders in the fight against homelessness and can thus play a central role in dissemination and scaling up learning.
FEANTSA is experienced in trans-national and EU-funded projects on homelessness, including in the area of CVET. FEANTSA is currently on the steering group of the ELOSH project (European Learning Outcomes in Supported Housing), which is a 'Transfer of Innovation' project funded under the Leonardo Da Vinci sub programme of the Life Long Learning Programme.
FEANTSA has considerable experience of training and capacity building activities including events (conferences, Peer Reviews, workshops), and production of materials (toolkits on various aspects of homeless service delivery, a forthcoming Massive Online Open Course, etc.).
Habitat for Humanity
Hungary
Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit Christian organisation that seeks to eliminate housing poverty worldwide. We believe that a decent and sustainable home is a basic human right.
Habitat for Humanity Hungary was founded in 1996.
Our projects focus on the housing of vulnerable families and communities and we are present on some of the Roma settlements in Hungary to foster empowerment on housing rights and to create communities that can help develop and renovate their homes. We are also active in housing led solutions for homeless people. We involve large numbers of volunteers in all our activities.
Habitat for Humanity is a key player globally on housing rights as we are working in 80 countries, fighting against housing poverty with building, community development and advocacy. Habitat for Humanity believes that symptomatic treatment is not enough to reduce homelessness and that a comprehensive housing policy is required to prevent people from losing their homes. Temporary homeless care is not the answer: homeless people need to have the opportunity of a normal home and comprehensive care to prevent them losing their homes. Consequently, we have begun working on Housing First projects. Our approach means that we work alongside the homeless, as well as the municipalities and local citizens, to raise awareness and produce systemic change.
Besides working on policy proposals, we help homeless people directly, i.e. in 2014, we helped 10 families who were living in shacks or public spaces to find a permanent and affordable home. This project helped the participants to move to renovated social rentals. Our partnership provided comprehensive and intensive social work that helped them to prepare for and sustain their new rentals.
SAD
Czech Republic
Mission: The mission of the "Association of shelters in the Czech Republic" represents the people and organisations providing support to homeless people and those at risk of losing their homes.
Objectives: The Association has 84 members and its activities are aimed at achieve the following objectives:
- To collaborate with other organisations concerned with the issues that homeless people face.
- To create a cooperative network of shelters and other support services for people to people in need.
- To create a unified platform for negotiations with the state, legislative and local government and other authorities at all levels of government.
- • To perform consulting, training, consultancy and information services designed to meet the needs of our members.
One of the Association’s activities in the Czech Republic concerns education and we organise and participate in training support workers, homeless people and the public.
Ius Medicinae Foundation
Poland
The Ius Medicine Fundation (Ius) was founded in 2011 by the doctor of law Dorota Karkowska. Its primary mission is to support human rights in the public health sector by fostering the creation of good legislation through research and advocacy initiatives.
The Foundation provides opinions on existing legislation, suggests necessary amendments and submits its own proposals. It monitors the implementation of the right to proper health care by the public health bodies by issuing regular monitoring reports on the rights of patients. The Foundation, which has a relatively small staff team (3 people), cooperates with many stakeholders engaged in public health issues, including third sector and public bodies. These include specialists and advocates for patients’ rights, community psychiatry, harm reduction programs and HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness.
Although the Foundation is relatively new, it has already implemented two projects at the national level: a campaign to raise awareness - “The Rights of Patients – Your Rights” and a self-regulating initiative for organisations working with patients from health care institutions - “Ethical code of the Patients’ Organisations”. Both projects were funded through “Swiss Contribution”.
Since April 2014, the Foundation has lead the project “Housing First – Evidence based Advocacy” (http://www.czynajpierwmieszkanie.pl/) in partnership with the Camillian Mission of Social Assistance and the Salvation Army in Iceland. The project offers sustainable evidenced-based advocacy for a change in attitudes towards support systems for severely excluded homeless people. Evidence is collected through desk and empirical research based on data accumulated by those providing support to this group (extent of the problem, real institutional and individual cost of the problem and stakeholders’ attitudes) and disseminated in stakeholder consultation seminars and conferences, websites, online newsletters and other publications.
The goal of the project is to create a foundation for a future implementation of ‘Housing First’ programs. Through implementing the HFEA project, the Ius Medicinae Foundation plans to become an important stakeholder in the field of homelessness, especially as an advocate of housing led solutions to the issues faced by people experiencing homelessness and mental health difficulties. Our expertise on community psychiatry makes us believe that Housing First is critical in establishing sustainable solutions for this target group. Apart from the HFEA project, we have other ongoing projects dedicated to monitoring the rights of patients with an emphasis on the issue of homelessness. We have observed that many psychiatric patients are experiencing very difficult or even marginal housing situations and we want to help meet their needs by advocating for them.