I have worked with Giovanni for several years and he has been in and out of accommodation all that time and probably not sustaining his tenancy for longer than 3 months, spending a lot of his time rough sleeping. As a team we were able to write a referral to Spectrum housing and arrange an interview in our office, which was hard work due to his mental health. Part of his tenancy was a requirement to have floating support in place before the tenancy would go ahead, we completed a comprehensive written referral to a specialist rough sleeper floating support team and also arranged his initial meeting in our office. This has been a very complex case due to the amount of services supporting Giovanni and the team here playing a key role in this multi agency approach, I’m glad and proud of my team and Giovanni as he has now maintained his tenancy for over 8 months, also fully engaged with the community mental health team. I would like to add that he was recently our highest seller for several weeks.
In his own words, he said this:
“The Big Issue Foundation has helped me a lot, and after seven years on the street they have helped me to get housed. It was very strange living in a house at first. My proudest moment has to be when I finally engaged with the mental health team, and started to work with them to change my life for the better”.
