The homelessness crisis has intensified in the two years since Prince William set out his mission to address the issue with rising numbers of people on the streets and record-high numbers of people living in temporary accommodation<\/a> across the UK.<\/p>\n But Homewards, which is backed by \u00a350 million of new finance from Lloyds Banking Group alongside funding from the Royal Foundation, is starting to demonstrate some changes on the ground, according to organisers.<\/p>\n The five-year project is operating in Sheffield, Lambeth, Aberdeen, Newport in Wales, Northern Ireland and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.<\/p>\n Prince William will see some of the work up close as he marks Homewards\u2019 second birthday in Sheffield on (Tuesday) 1 July.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The royal will visit a school in Sheffield where, along with two others in the area, work is underway to identify young people at greater risk of homelessness and give them and their families early support to prevent it.<\/p>\n The Upstream project sees families surveyed to spot signs they may fall into difficulties.<\/p>\n It debuted in the Australian Geelong Project, where it saw a 40% reduction in youth homelessness and a 20% reduction in the number of young people leaving school early.<\/p>\n Youth homelessness charity Centrepoint<\/a> has been operating the project in England while Big Issue recently saw Llamau\u2019s Upstream work up close at our recent Big Community Roadshow in Cardiff<\/a>.<\/p>\n The royal visit comes as residents have moved into homes in the city as part of a new Housing First project<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sheffield\u2019s Innovative Housing Project is unlocking homes provided by the private rented sector to support families through reshaping engagement with private landlords.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n The residents will have access to wraparound support while a services navigator, employed by Homewards Sheffield coalition member SOAR, will provide support services, including help to get into work.<\/p>\n The initiative is one of more than 100 across the six locations with 19 new initiatives funded through the Homewards Fund so far. The fund offers up to \u00a3500,000 of flexible seed funding to support each location\u2019s local action plan.<\/p>\n Homewards\u2019 second year saw the project pair up with Blue Light Card to give an estimated 60,000 people who work in the homelessness sector access to the discount card.<\/p>\n The project also teamed up with leading recruitment expert Hays to boost employment and training opportunities for people who have experienced homelessness across all six locations.<\/p>\n Hayes and youth homelessness charity EveryYouth\u2019s employability programme Project Flourish<\/a> has since worked to provide training to help young people into employment, creating new job opportunities at Specsavers and industrial services company Altrad.<\/p>\n The prince\u2019s work was also covered in a two-part ITV documentary that even saw him meet Big Issue founder Lord John Bird and Cwmbran vendor Vincent Lewis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n Going into the third year and beyond, Homewards is aiming to demonstrate how local solutions can prevent homelessness for specific cohorts of people before looking to scale them up.<\/p>\n Laurence added: \u201cWe\u2019re proud to say, as we head into our third year, that Homewards is the broadest collective effort working to prevent homelessness across the UK.<\/p>\n \u201cCollaboration has been crucial, and this year has truly highlighted the power of partnership. All sectors are stepping up to play their role and we have seen the business community specifically engaging on homelessness like never before.\u201d<\/p>\n Former Shelter chief executive Polly Neate said that Prince William\u2019s figurehead role<\/a> in tackling homelessness has helped to shift the narrative and challenge stigma around the issue.<\/p>\n Neate suggested that there is a culture across the country that homelessness is \u201cinevitable\u201d and an issue where \u201cthere\u2019s nothing we can do about it\u201d.<\/p>\n She added: \u201cFor me, what Prince William and Homewards are doing, if you want to put it in a nutshell, is tackling that culture straight on and saying: this is not inevitable, this is preventable. We are empowered to do something about it. If we all work together and it is something that, as a country, we shouldn\u2019t just accept and we shouldn\u2019t just put up with.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been saying that for seven and a half years at Shelter but, sadly, I don\u2019t have the profile or the voice or the impact that Prince William does when he says the same things. Having somebody like him really being very clear that it is possible to prevent homelessness and it is possible to end it is hugely impactful and we\u2019re already seeing that.\u201d<\/p>\n Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Real stories.<\/strong>\u202f<\/strong>Real impact.<\/strong>\u202f<\/strong>Real change.<\/strong>\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n No clickbait. Just trustworthy journalism that gets to the heart of big issues in the UK and beyond. Words drive real change.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Poverty-Zero-banners_article-800x250-1.png\")
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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe look forward to continuing and building on this work into year three of the programme and beyond.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[7709,7714,7713,6332,6333,533,2832,532,2831,7710,519,7711,7712],"class_list":{"0":"post-225785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-british-royal-family","9":"tag-catherine","10":"tag-catherine-middleton","11":"tag-homelessness","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-kate-middleton","14":"tag-prince-of-wales","15":"tag-prince-william","16":"tag-princess-of-wales","17":"tag-royal-families","18":"tag-royal-family","19":"tag-uk-royal-family","20":"tag-william"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114770573100026388","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}