Creating Better Places

HomelessWise Training

October 10, 2023 by Lizzie Hill Leave a Comment

What is HomelessWise Training and how can you access it?

The HomelessWise Training programme from St Mungo’s provides a practical guide on how to offer help to those experiencing, or at risk of homelessness. It’s not uncommon to see people sleeping rough on the way to work and not know how to help. HomelessWise training can provide the knowledge to overcome this.

These sessions are designed to educate audiences on issues surrounding homelessness, as well as how to approach or help anyone found rough sleeping. Being able to direct people found sleeping rough to local services is an invaluable skill, leading to people receiving the help and continued support needed to come off the streets for good.

Delivered by St Mungo’s, they will teach your business how to safely support people found to be sleeping rough. These sessions help staff around the building to feel more confident to approach and engage with someone.

This not only offers invaluable support and kindness to the individual, but also helps to protect the business’ reputation. When staff feel empowered to make informed decisions about instances of homelessness near their work, this helps to protect their brand while doing something practical and empathetic to end homelessness for good.

Drawing on 50 years’ of experience in the sector, these 90 minute sessions are trainer-led, interactive and encourage discussion. The training can be face to face or online and can also include bespoke content specific to the business needs.

This bespoke content can include:

Cost of living crisis
Health and homelessness
Women: rough sleeping & recovery
Housing challenges for the LGBTQ+ community
Race and homelessness
Environmental impact on rough sleepers
The working homeless
The international aspect
Operational element relevant to a specific sector, e.g. Housing First, Employing St Mungo’s clients, Managing rough sleeping around railway stations.

Having entered a corporate partnership with St Mungo’s earlier this year, we have seen first hand the amazing work they do to support those experiencing homelessness. HomelessWise is an innovative partnership between St Mungo’s and the business community, giving individuals the knowledge they need to be a part of helping to end homelessness for good.

Painting and Decorating for St Mungo’s

October 2, 2023 by Lizzie Hill

Small acts have a meaningful impact. We recently joined St Mungo’s for a day of painting and decorating at one of their centres.

A fresh lick of paint can transform a space. In September we participated in a day of painting and decorating with St Mungo’s. The aim was to freshen up a London assessment service.

St Mungo’s is one of the leading UK homelessness charities. Through our partnership we see just how much their work affects positive change. St Mungo’s provide support to those experiencing homelessness in a number of ways. These include accommodation, recovery centres, and services that offer help with healthcare and employment. These services often require upkeep and that’s where the help of volunteers comes in.

With the help of some of our friends at CBRE and St Mungo’s, we spent this day painting in an effort to freshen up this space. Our seven volunteers transformed the corridors to be bright, decorated and clean for clients to enjoy.

Small acts like this make a big difference for St Mungo’s services and clients. With these centres feeling improved and cared for, we know that this can have a huge impact on clients. This can further support well-being and help clients to feel safe and proud of where they live. As a vital part of our society, it’s important that these centres remain in a good condition.

A lot was achieved during this volunteering day, with some well deserved pizza topping off the afternoon for the volunteers and service staff to enjoy.

“Thank you all for your time and enthusiasm… Your work has already contributed to the service looking so much brighter and welcoming for our clients. Also, thanks for the pizzas”
A St Mungo’s Service Deputy Manager

We’ll be heading back to this assessment centre in the new year to freshen the space up further. This lets us continue this journey of improvement, and be a part of maintaining the centre’s clean environment.

“Thank you so much for all your hard work… the corridor looked amazing afterwards, and I can’t believe you had time to do the ceiling too – looked great! Large pieces of hands-on work, such as yesterday, would take one volunteer or member of staff a really long time. We rely on our amazing corporate volunteers to support us in the work we are unable to do individually.”
Eleonor Morphew, Corporate Volunteering Coordinator

This was a brilliant volunteering opportunity to be a part of, and we can’t wait to go back and help out even further!

Round Up: Our Charity Football Event for St Mungo’s

September 22, 2023 by Lizzie Hill Leave a Comment

Last week saw our Regular Cleaning values come to life as we raised money for the amazing homelessness charity, St Mungo’s.

What better way to get everyone involved than a friendly game of footie? We recently held a charity football game for St Mungo’s, raising awareness and funds for this fantastic cause.

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Having entered a partnership with the leading homelessness charity, this is one of the many events we’ve been collaborating on. St Mungo’s provide invaluable support to those that are rough sleeping and we couldn’t wait to help raise some funds and awareness.

The game took place place at Goals Beckenham on Friday 15th September, with an impressive twelve teams taking part in the tournament, giving the World Cup a run for its money.

So how did the day go?

Some real competition was offered up to our players as twelve teams played three games each in our three leagues.

With teams made up of Regular Cleaning colleagues, plus teams from our clients and partners, it was brilliant to see how much fun, collaboration and healthy competition this tournament brought!

A huge thank you to our clients and partners that took part, including Eighty Strand, Six Mitre Passage, Paula Bone One Stratford Place and Mayflower Washroom Solutions.

This was a brilliant demonstration of team work and a fantastic social value fundraising event!

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The day was split into two parts, with the introduction to referees and the Captains’ briefing getting things started before the group stages kick off. At 8pm we took a break for the buffet, and then the knockout rounds started. The tournament started to heat up for the final rounds, with Team Mayflower taking the place as our champions, and Katerine’s team in second place.

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We’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of support we got for this event, raising an incredible £1,489 for St Mungo’s.

“Huge thank you to everyone at Regular Cleaning for putting on a fantastic event for St Mungo’s and for raising vital funds to help people experiencing homelessness. We are extremely grateful for you championing our work and can’t thank you enough for your continued support as one of our dedicated Corporate Partners!”
From Lucy Cowham, St Mungo’s Corporate Partnerships Executive – Account Management

It was wonderful to see such a demonstration of our company values from all those that participated in the day. Thank you to everyone involved, who either played, came along to watch or helped organise. We had so much fun, and it was all in the name of a truly deserving cause.