Our Annual Housing Justice Conference is a day dedicated to Faith and Community projects across the homelessness sector coming together to learn and connect.

This year’s conference took place at The Abbey Centre in London on Wednesday 23rd September.

You can see pictures from the conference here.

If you attended we wouldĀ love to hear your feedback so we can continue to grow our sessions and meet the needs of our network.

This year's attendees told us:

“It was brilliant meeting and connecting with other people in the industry, being reminded of the why and inspired how a lot of little work is transforming society bit by bit.”Ā 

“A genuinely excellent event. My biggest highlight was the opportunity to meet such a wide range of organisations and people working across homelessness, housing, faith, community support and associated services.

I particularly valued the conversations between sessions and the opportunity to meet organisations outside my normal network. There was a huge amount of experience, knowledge and enthusiasm in the room, and I came away with new contacts, ideas and a much better understanding of some of the challenges being experienced across the sector.” – Dean Wormleighton, Squaddie Box CIC

“The Bishop did a great job in drawing us closer to God/Jesus/Holy Spirit, to make a devotion for a group of people from so many denominations is not an easy task, and to at the same time inspired people to meet those we serve like Jesus wants us to do, can only be done in becoming more like Jesus ourselves.”

What we did and learnt together this year

Keep the Faith: Prayer Session with Bishop Rob

Alongside the usual networking Breakfast, Bishop Rob led us in reflecting on “How do we make room for others”.

Keep The Faith Prayer Breakfast Presentation

Leadership Development with Caplor Horizons

Kamal, Rosie and Dan from Caplor Horizons led an interactive session inviting us to reflect on our leadership strengths and challenges utilising their Caplor House Framework.

“I loved the caplor workshop- it was interactive, super relevant to our team, gave me time to talk to a mixture of people and wasn’t at all awkward – this felt like an easier way to have relevant conversations and gave me ideas to take back to my team.”

“My highlight was Rosie and her Caplor Horizons session as it spread encouragement to all that we can all make a difference together, at the same time we were enlightened about how much we need each other.”

Prevention under Pressure – Navigating the prevention agenda as VCFS homelessness services with Becky Rice and Laura Bernard (The Passage)

Becky and Laura shared that prevention is everybody’s role within the sector and there are many untapped opportunities to prevent homelessness. While there are challenges faced by day centres and frontline services to rise to the prevention agenda, there are also opportunities thanks to the deep community connections that have been built.

Prevention under Pressure Presentation

Community Organising Approaches to Homelessness with Melinda Mo-martinez (City of Sanctuary Sheffield) and Matt Turtle (Museum of Homelessness)

Melinda and Matt led a rousing session on how we can push beyond just service delivery and support community members to use their voices to fight for systemic change.

Community Organising Approaches to Homelessness Presentation

Racism & Housing: Examining the roots and sharing solutions with Claude Hendrickson, Henri Baptiste and Melinda Mo-Martinez

In this packed plenary we learnt about the roots of housing allocations and immigration policies that have led to racialised housing disparities, how community self-builds and community organising are routes to a more equitable system.

“My highlight of the conferenece was learning about community organising, and the issues faced by BME communities”

Racism & Housing – Examining the Roots and Finding Solutions Presentation

Co production: How to start and what to consider with our network members

In this session we heard from four of our network members (Sanctuary Trust, FCENS, The Bus Shelter and Falcon Support) about how they have embedded lived experience into their structures, before breaking out to brainstorm how we can build our own coproduction activities.

Supporting people in Rural areas: Hidden homelessness & limited infastructure with Viv Griffiths (Homelesslink) and Henry Meacock (St Petrocs)

Viv began the session with sharing the policy and funding context around rural homelessness and the work being done to put more money and attention into this part of the sector, before Henry shared with us what he is seeing on the ground in Cornwall.

Rural Homelessness Presentation

We were blessed to have a Closing Performance from Shared Voices & The Seaview Band aka Troubadours.