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Lewisham Homelessness Forum

I moved to Lewisham in 2001 and I quickly connected with Lewisham Homelessness Forum (LHF).


Those first meetings were held in the office of a housing advice charity called Bread and Roses. The meetings consisted of about five or six people and they were disorganised. I managed to do a deal to take on running the forum because the organiser was struggling to get funding to keep going. The deal was that if she got her funding, she would take back the forum because that was part of her funding application. I brought the Forum to King’s Church because it was a better facility, we didn’t need to worry about paying for a venue and because as I was starting the Jericho Road Project it was a great way to connect with others who were doing great work in the borough – the 999 Club for example.



The meetings quickly grew numerically – so we have regularly have 30 people attending. We established that we would meet six times a year and I am grateful that so many others played their part in making it an excellent forum. I love it when outside speakers come to visit and the first thing they say is “I didn’t expect so many people to be here”. One of the tensions of the forum has been to take people who represent very different positions – the local authority against the law centre for example – but we have worked hard to focus on what we can achieve together.


I have a greater value of the work Marsha Phoenix does in helping young women and the efforts of the Evelyn 190 centre to bring justice for vulnerable people or the desire of the DWP staff to provide help for those who are helpless. I have appreciated the common sense approach taken by senior managers in Housing Benefit and LBL Housing Teams.


All of this has been achieved by having a forum that allows everyone a voice into complex and challenging issues. Together we have written to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to highlight the injustice surrounding mental heath assessments, together we have received training on EU law affecting migrant workers, and we have expressed despair on many occasions but also celebrated successes.


This week it was my turn to chair the meeting as I have done regularly for 16 years – I really enjoy it but I approach the meeting knowing that I won’t understand everything, there are always people who have more knowledge than me, it is an environment where there is always new information and of course, new acronyms. It has been a forum that has helped me grow in my role.

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