Decision details

Rough Sleeping Prevention and Recovery Grant (RSPARG) – Voluntary & Community Frontline Sector Allocation decisions.

This relates to the RSPARG funding from Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), which is to be used for prevention of, and recovery from, rough sleeping.

A minimum of 20% of the £480,000 received by CYC is mandated to be spent in the VCFS (voluntary/community frontline sector), this proposal totals £216,000 which is 45%.

The proposal is to use funds for the following:
• £40k to Peasholme Charity for Transitional Tenancy Support worker – key role for preventing homelessness and rough sleeping by working with people newly moving into a tenancy or precariously housed
• £40k to Restore to increase the existing floating support service delivered to CYC tenants with a view to maintaining tenancies and preventing homelessness
• £41k to Lived Insights to maximise pool of lived experience researchers
• £25k to CareCent towards existing city centre breakfast and shower drop-in provision, and to enable focus on those presenting from out of area with generic support needs so CYC Navigators can offer more specialised support
• £70k to York in Recovery for two part-time outreach workers (one male one female), who can work with hostels and people on the streets to signpost to services, and also offer consistent drop in at the recovery hub for people at any stage of their recovery journey. They are a LERO organization so they would be people with lived experience offering peer to peer support.

This is in line with the Homelessness strategy’s focus on multi-agency working, and all works towards prevention of, and recovery from, homelessness. The additional support and floating support made available from this funding is a step towards increasing Housing First in the city and defining the model to ensure the required support is available, and that prevention of homelessness is front and centre of York’s approach.

The outputs required in return for the grants will been defined through the process of completing Grant Agreement forms.

Due to limited timescales for allocating the funding and embargoed announcements, direct grant awards are being made in line with existing priorities and partners.

As such no other options have been considered at this stage. A future needs analysis is being undertaken by VCSE organisations in the city and closer working with York CVS in future will help drive future priorities.

See above – none.