Hopestead's Hope Funds helps 3,000 people through latest grant round

Hopestead team members, representative of partner charities and supporters at the Hope Funds workshop day.

More than 3,000 people have benefited from £150,000 in grants awarded in the latest round of a homelessness charity's scheme.

Across Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, 11 partner charities have been awarded grants of between £5,000 and £15,000 through the project, called Hope Funds, which is run by Norwich-based homelessness charity Hopestead.

Lucy Parish, Director of Operations at Hopestead, said the project was vital for charities who are finding it ever more difficult to secure funding for their work.

Ms Parish said: "Hope Funds gives our partners the chance to try new things, learn, and grow, while easing the pressure of finding funding. We're giving them the space to dream bigger, act bolder, and reach further."

The support has helped Norfolk Community Law Service recover £2.3 million in benefits for people who had been wrongly denied. It has helped the Magdalene Group reach more marginalised women experiencing homelessness and domestic abuse in Norwich and the surrounding area, and has allowed The Horticulture Industry Scheme (THIS) to expand its team to deliver more free social garden sessions for former offenders and others in Thetford and the surrounding area.

Each project run by the partner charities is seen as preventing homelessness in some way.

Debbie-Anne Farrow, Housing and Support Manager at another partner, the St Vincent de Paul Society in Norwich, said thanks to their grant: "We've been able to employ another person, which means we can offer more support to the people we're working with. They're managing to stay in their homes and their mental and emotional wellbeing has improved so much."

Other partner charities in this fourth annual round of Hope Funds grants include the Breckland Children's Clothes Bank, Hope Into Action Norwich, Cambridge Women's Aid and Selig Suffolk. The others are the Sue Lambert Trust, the Benjamin Foundation and Cambridge-based Wintercomfort for the Homeless. The partners recently came together with Hopestead to discuss their impact and different approaches to tackling homelessness at a workshop at Norwich’s King’s Centre. The session was led by Rebecca White from the consultancy Hasler-White Inclusive Facilitation.

Since launching in 2020, Hope Funds has provided £587,473 in funding to homelessness organisations. In total, the programme has supported more than 29,000 individuals and families across the region.

Hopestead is part of Bromford Flagship, one of the UK's biggest social housing providers and itself a charity.

Applications for the fifth round of Hope Funds grants will open this summer.