 This episode of the podcast is supported by Audible. You can download and listen to the world's best storytelling. I use it all the time to and from work. You can listen to audiobooks, original series and more on their free app. To get your free 30 day subscription, which includes a free book, click on the link in our show notes and enjoy. Hey, folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had an amazing lady called Rosie Ferguson come in and have a chat. She is the CEO of the House in Barnabas. If you don't know, it's an amazing charity that seeks to break the cycle of homelessness and they have a members club in Soho Square and they have an amazing employment academy where they get people in who need help to find a job, training, interview practice, you know, all of that cool stuff. We hear a lot about the House in Barnabas. We discuss the main topics and issues around homelessness at the moment in the UK and what we can do to help have an impact. Yeah, hope you enjoy the podcast. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. We're booming, we're live. Rosie, thank you for coming in. Thank you for having me. So you've been the CEO for the House in Barnabas for what? Coming up for three months, so I'm very new. Okay, yeah. Still learning about getting two groups of things. Nice, nice. And what were you doing before? So I was previously Chief Executive of Gingerbread, the National Charity of Single Parents and before that I was Chief Executive of London Youth, the network of youth clubs across London. So I've kind of always been in the charity sector and seen some of the same problems that people face in society, like from different perspectives if you like from the kind of young people from the family and now from the perspective of homelessness. So it's really interesting. Very interesting. Yeah. Did you always wanna be working in the charity sector? How did it all start? It was kind of, as with most people's careers, it's not so much a definite choice as like you kind of, you do the next thing that seems interesting and then before you know it, your networks and the opportunities that come are in the thing that you started in. I think I always had a sense of passion that inequality was wrong and that it was important to give people who didn't have opportunities to enjoy their life and be the best they can be. So I think that was probably quite instinctive and then I kind of followed that and initially I started out in youth work so supporting young people to... Did you go into university? I did, yeah, I went to Goldsmiths and then I started volunteering when I was at Goldsmiths, supporting kind of youth volunteering and giving young people the chance to volunteer overseas and do things that are fun and I did a bit of kind of campaigning and then, yeah, started doing that as a job and then my kind of career progressed from then. So what's the route then from volunteering to running a charity? I mean, I think volunteering is something that I carry on doing so I think volunteering is a starting point but it's also a kind of lifestyle so I'm now on a number of boards and carry on volunteering with different things that's kind of ingrained if you like and I think for me, the opportunity to, you know, get into my first role in youth work and then I was lucky to get promoted. I mean, a lot of it is luck, isn't it, in life? Yeah, well, do it yourself in the scenario, don't you? Yeah, I mean... You're still going to make the right choices and work hard and... Yeah, I did do... So I did a Master's in Volunteer Sector Management at Kears Business School which was really good in terms of getting the rigor and discipline of how to run a charity to couple with kind of passion and enthusiasm. Was that straight after uni or kind of during your career? No, it was a few years later, yeah, yeah, as I was... Yeah, well, I was working full-time, yeah. Did you find that useful? It was great, yeah, it was really good. I think careers in the charity sector... I mean, I was lucky to have investment of great people. There isn't as much resources to spend on people development, so you have to be a little bit more entrepreneurial in the way that you access it. Yeah, yeah. And if, you know, I spent time going out and shadowing Chief Execs, who I admired, kind of reaching out and building yourself a network and taking, essentially, grabbing any opportunity that you can to do more and to kind of take on more responsibility. That's true, we actually did... We spoke about it in the office yesterday about taking responsibility for your own learning. Yeah, interesting. Because a lot of the time, people rely on their companies and they send them on training courses and those things. There's so many cool, like, e-learning platforms, Coursera, and I think you've got to take charge like you've done. And most of my learning hasn't come from training courses. It's come from getting myself in a situation where I'm out of my comfort zone or meeting people who stretch and challenge you. And I think, yeah, that for me is exciting. And from just jumping in the deep end and doing something, you know, 100% sure you can do it. It's the best way. Being uncomfortable, being comfortable, being uncomfortable... Yeah, yeah. ...is when you really start to learn. Yeah. I really agree with that. How did you get involved with the House of Saint Barnabas? So I was looking for my next kind of challenge. And I'd just been to the House a number of times over the years and just thought it was, I think the combination of the social enterprise and the kind of unique way of working, you know, in partnership in a kind of corporate environment, but for good, but also coupled with, you know, a really important mission around breaking the cycle of homelessness and the need, you know, absolutely critical need and the services that it offers being, you know, really high quality. I think the third thing is I just thought it'd be quite good fun. Yeah, it's a great spot. That's turned out to be true. It's a really good spot. So what's the history? So it became a members club, was it five, six years ago? Yeah, absolutely. So the House was built back in the 17th century. So for those that don't know, this is number one Greek street on Soho Square. In 1846, it was gifted to set up as a charity and interestingly to do two things. One, to help the kind of poor and destitute of London, but secondly, to help wealthy people with disciplined philanthropy. So help wealthy people spend their money well to support the poor. And then for kind of well over a century, it's then been various guys of homestarity and hostel and many folks supporting women. It closed about 10 years, slightly more ago when the kind of standards expected around hostels quite rightly raised and it no longer met those standards. So actually housed people in... It housed people. Yeah, so for a long time, it was a kind of hostel for destitute women, essentially. And there's all sorts of stories in that, as you can imagine. And then I think, so it reopened as a private members club six years ago. And for me, it kind of returns full circle to that thing of how do you combine supporting people who've experienced homelessness and who really need a leg up, but at the same time with the private members club, we're also supporting people who are reasonably wealthy and want to spend their money well and want to kind of enjoy themselves, but also make a difference while they're doing it. And so I feel like we've come full circle in terms of what the charity was originally set up. So how does that work then? People can join the members club, spend their money, restaurant, bar, all of those things. And then I know you have an employment academy. So the people who've gone through the employment academy then get a job at the house? Not quite, but kind of. So the employment academy, I'll start with there. The employment academy supports people who've experienced homelessness and we support them to secure good work that will give them kind of lasting security, a good home somewhere where they feel comfortable and they're safe and they can stay and a good network. So a network of people that will support them if things go wrong. They're the things that we need. We believe people need to genuinely break the cycle of homelessness rather than to just get into a short, kind of be on the roller coaster where you're kind of okay for a bit and then as soon as something goes wrong, you fall back into rough sleeping or whatever. So that's our mission. We work with people initially for 12 weeks supporting them to, I think, regain a bit of dignity is one of the main things that we do. So we support people with employment. So we give them, they do training in the members club for 10 weeks of work experience but we also support them with their kind of housing, with their kind of mental health, with support them by taking them to galleries, giving them access to concerts. They get a mentor from the membership and then after their 12 weeks finished, we have graduation and then we support them on going for a year to make sure that they progress into work, progress into home. But then beyond that, progress into a career and a home that are gonna provide them the kind of security and lifestyle that they want to live. So it's a very holistic program. The way that the club plays in that is it's a training ground for those participants. So they do their 10 week work experience both in the bar and kitchen but also in the office in our events team, in our art team, in our PR team. They also become mentors and for the participants. So the members of the club, the club of mentors for participants, we also hope, and I think this is a kind of aspiration for me in the future that the house can also be a kind of convening space in terms of conversations about how we break the cycle of homelessness and how we bring different people together because we have a membership of people across government, creatives, tech people, charity sector. How do we bring our community together with different disciplines to think about how we can all together tackle some of the challenges that cause homelessness? I think it's awesome because I speak to a lot of companies and all companies, you know, we wanna help and they often help by donating money. When it comes to giving them a job, however, people are very cautious about hiring someone who might have had a drug problem, might have been alcoholic, might have been sleeping rough on the street. So, you know, everyone talks about we love to help people but when it comes down to like actually giving them a job, you find there's a little bit of a disconnect which I find quite interesting. Yeah, and it is, I mean, I think one thing that has really struck me since starting this role is that you kind of have, when someone says homeless person or a person who's experienced homeless, you have an image in your head of who that person is. And the first day that I walked into the Employment Academy and met all of the participants, it kind of struck me like, oh, these are just ordinary people. These are not, you know, these are people who've had bad luck and who've had a range of different butch but by the time they come to us then they're no longer rough sleeping so they've had some support to get them. If they have been rough sleeping, they've had support to get them into. And they are clean, commonly, so now that doesn't mean that they don't have all sorts of vulnerabilities and backgrounds, but actually they're not necessarily young people so they're of all ages and they are, as a group, they're a kind of confident, articulate, characterful bunch and certainly you can see standing in that room how much employability skills there are. Definitely. We actually ran, this was a few years ago, one of a session for the Employment Academy before you were CEO. How was that? Well, so it was great. So five of us went and we were running a course on CV writing. Oh, great. Helping to write cover sheets and then methods for applying for a job. Yeah, great. And so I had in my mind before I went, for some reason I thought everyone would be, I don't know, young. And then I got there and I think the average, there must have been 15 to 20 people and I think the average age must have been like mid to late 40s and you were like, wow. And then you realize when people decide they want to share their story with you and you're chatting and you're helping with CV and stuff that like no one's very far away from homelessness. I mean, you could lose your job, you've got a mortgage, you can't pay, you've got all of these other expenses. And suddenly, you know. And people have had whole lives and careers and then for whatever reason, whether it's relationship breakdown or I mean illness, mental illness is a huge cause of homelessness or people being a carer for a family member and then, you know, for whatever reason, your kind of circumstances change and then if you don't have that financial and kind of supportive network, you just can fall through the cracks very easily. 100% and then it's like, you know, this kind of downward spiral, mentally. And then the other big thing I find is stigma attached to someone who's been homeless or been an alcoholic and stuff. And also the stigma they attach to themselves which then stops them and getting the job they might want. And it's a tough one. What do you do for like clothing and stuff? So if they want to go for like an interview and they don't, is there like a there? So we have a couple of partners actually who donate clothing. So there's a, I mean, I've just completed my first program. So I've just been there. Being there, so the graduation is next week. So I've just seen one program through and there's a day about kind of a few weeks in when a clothes, there's a kind of loads of women's clothes donated and men's kind of suits and waistcoats and the like. And you suddenly, there's a kind of scramble in one of the rooms while everyone's trying to find the clothes that they like and then suddenly all of the people who've been in the first few weeks of the program are really glamorous and in really good clothes. And that's fantastic to see. And you actually see that. I mean, obviously clothes are superficial but they can also, they can also lift people's dignity a bit. And it's fantastic to see that, you know, to see that transition of people from when they first walk in the door and the clothes is just one example but how they feel. And also, I think like House of Malibus is an amazing building. They're working in an environment which is, you know, Dickens wrote a tale of two cities there. You know, Gladstone's been there, Basil Jets' been there, you know, it's an amazing, we have celebrities coming through. It's an amazing environment to be in and you can't be in there and not feel proud. And so we really try to make sure they feel part of that community and that that, hopefully, that pride I think is part of the magic of what we do. Definitely. How impactful is your first employment academy being? Do you measure, you know, how long they, how many get jobs and how long they stay and these kind of things? So it's my first one that I've been through. I think it's the 16th program that the house has run. Yeah, so I think it's about two thirds of people getting to work as a following the program, which compared to other, I need to check my stats on that. I think it's about, but compared to other comparative programs, that's a really strong outcome. So I think it is successful. What we've noticed is the challenges with the program to date. They've been really good at supporting people into their first job. But what happens is they're still in entry level, kind of early stage roles, often zeros, contracts, often below the living wage. So how do we then, so now our new strategy focuses on good work, good home and good network. So how do we really get people work that they're going to enjoy? That is going to pay them enough to live a decent and basic standard of living or more that has a kind of decent commute where there's progression opportunities. So I think we're focusing less on, let's just get people into work and actually how do we support them to really progress and achieve security? And is at the moment mostly like hospitality type roles? It's a lot in hospitality because that's our kind of base. And so on the program, 50% do their work placement hospitality and 50% don't do others. We have quite a few hospitality partners, which is great. We are really keen to have partners. What we really need is role administrative roles, more businesses, parks, administration. You know, there's what we'd like to do is support people to progress into roles that they're passionate about. Yeah, administrative roles are really businesses around the city here. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. There's both as you know, the way as employers, but actually if that feels like too big a first step, then just becoming a corporate member of House St. Barnabas or an individual member and you kind of become part of the community and then there's loads of ways to help. Awesome. What other avenues are there available for them for help? There's a kind of complex landscape of support for people who are experienced in homelessness. When somebody is first homeless or first off sleeping, the first thing they should do is go to their local authority. And the local authority does have a duty to support them. How do they support them? So the local authority should try to get them into a hostel. First of all, there are hostel facilities. There's also the street. And they're free? Are they in a hostel? So the local authority pay for a hostel. Yeah, so it's free for the person. But they might be a waiting list. It might take them time to get. I mean, they should be housed in that period of time. If they're a resident in that local authority and they kind of comply with the requirements, but obviously a lot of people who find themselves homeless are having problems with alcohol or substance abuse, have mental health issues. So often there's some very acute support that people need. That means they need additional support just to access the basic services. So yes, in theory, there should be help for everybody who's experienced in homelessness. The reality is that there aren't enough resources. The support is targeted often the way that services work is they're targeted at one thing. So this is going to see this person about your housing and go and see this person about your mental health. Go and see this person about your substance abuse. But actually, and this is a similar thing. There's no like holistic kind of. And that's what we try to do, really, Bill. And that's similar from my experience of working with young people. You know, if a young person's having difficulty, they'll be put on a gangs programme or on a social behaviour programme or a dyslexia. Whereas actually what young people need is exactly the same as any human beings. We need confidence. We need love. We need a network of people who are going to back us. We need kindness and we need opportunity to be given responsibility and show that we can and have people around us believe in us. So that's often our services aren't designed to give people that kind of opportunity. And that's what we give to our own friends and family that we love to enable them to succeed. But that doesn't always that doesn't always kind of that's not always reflected into way that the state understandably delivers services. So there's not like a kind of like one point of contact style. So there is street links. So if you see somebody sleeping rough who you think might be vulnerable or who need support you can report that to street link and they will kind of identify and provide support to anybody sleeping rough. So that's something that any member of the public can do. I think it's a coordinated network across local authorities and I think it's coordinated between a number of agencies. So there's also a huge number of charities providing support for people who are kind of first of all rough sleeping and then there's like new horizons in Houston that provides support for young people who are sleeping rough in London. We've got Connections and Martins. So like where people who are sleeping rough have places to go where they can get immediate support. We tend to take referrals from those organizations so at the point that they go to them and they'll support them with that kind of very basic needs getting somewhere to sleep getting clean, getting and then hopefully getting them into a hostel helping them interact with their local authority. And then they'll be passed on to us at the point that they're a little bit more stable and I'm ready to kind of rebuild some of the other aspects of their life. And then they'll have somewhere to be to be living to be living as well. So about a third of our participants are in hostels. By the time that they reach us about a third are in hostels but a third have secured local authority housing but that might be short term or so they've kind of got themselves a tendency and about a third are living in kind of sofa surfing or an overcrowded accommodation. So they're not rough sleeping but their housing continues to be vulnerable but they've kind of made a bit of that journey in terms of moving themselves. So they've got somewhere to sleep and somewhere to shower. How long can you stay in a hostel for? Interesting. So I've been around to visit some hostels as part of my induction. I think most of them they have a kind of one year, two year maximum but then some people will come in and out within a few weeks because actually they need a bit of support to reconnect with their family or to move other people will stay for longer if it's difficult to move them on. I think we don't have good enough mental health services so often people with high mental health support needs can be in a hostel for a long time because actually what they really need is intensive mental health support but that is very difficult to come by. So that's when people often, they're not really able to live alone and yet they don't reach the threshold to be kind of hospitalised or have intensive mental health support. So that's often when people can end up staying in hostels for a very long time. Has there been an increase in homelessness the last five or so years or has it been fairly kind of consistent? I think certainly the, I mean as, I mean poverty is increasing in the UK and the kind of vulnerability that I think most people who live in London can see that over the last few years rough sleeping has increased significantly certainly where I live. Yeah, it's much more visible than it was 10 years ago. I think the other challenge is that kind of the nature of poverty is changing and now in what way? I think poverty used to be the kind of historic kind of poverty as people who were unemployed and who weren't working. I think now most people who are living in the poverty of the UK are actually working and it's people who might be kind of working three jobs, zero contracts, minimum wage, single parents, people who are careers, anyone with a kind of vulnerability who is working, could be working three different jobs and still not able to, and the cost of housing, the cost of living means that they're still not able to feed their kids or feed themselves at the end of the month. The increasing access of food banks is a result of that. So actually the people who are vulnerable are kind of shifting and quite different people finding themselves in situations that they might not. I tend to see a lot more men on the streets but I have seen, I don't know if it's true or not, but I've seen a few more women over the years. Interesting. Often women don't choose to be, so if women are homeless, they are more vulnerable on the streets than men are. Obviously men are also, anybody who's sleeping on the streets is vulnerable, but if women find themselves homeless they're more likely to prioritise getting into a hostel or to find somewhere to sleep on a sofa or to where men are less vulnerable on the streets. So it is a lower number of women. I think it doesn't mean that often when women are homeless it's because they're, they might be leaving an abusive relationship or they might be, so the kind of circumstances within which people become homeless are slightly different. There's some kind of gender impacts there and also the kind of choice around where you choose to, where you choose to sleep for the night depending on where you feel the safest. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So overall it's kind of maybe a similar amount that are in the similar vulnerable position and maybe the avenues they can choose to. Yeah, absolutely. And often if there's children involved then it's women who end up having the children. So you often see a lot of single men in hostels because it's more likely that a woman with children will get housed quicker than someone without, yeah, if you've got children you get housed quicker. So there's kind of, you know, there's vulnerabilities on both sides really. But our programme, we work with the gender split, so we... It's on the Employment Academy you have... Yeah, so it's about 50-50, male-female, yeah. And the age range is older? As you say, it's kind of, I mean I think on the current programme the youngest is kind of mid-20s and the oldest is in their 50s so it's a real span and that also creates a real family. And are you facilitating the kind of network of, you know, they're meeting these people on the Employment Academy and they can start to kind of foster some friendships? Yeah, so there's, I mean, the team who deliver the Employment Academy are great and they're very much focused on how do you really build a strong supportive network for each other. So there's a lot of work done on kind of, a lot of group work around their aspirations and how they develop their confidence and that involves them kind of being vulnerable with each other and developing that kind of trust and support network that I imagine having seen the kind of intensity of the experience that will, you know, there'll be some friendships there that last forever. And then we also hope that the community of the club is built into that as well, that so they have a mentor who will also support them and they become kind of part of the Houses and Barnabas family if you like. That's great. So as a member, you can fill out a form and hopefully mentor someone. Yeah, absolutely. I need to do that. Oh yes, please do. I know, definitely. Well, I've been planning on doing it for ages and I actually need to. It's on my goals list in January. Fill out the form and then go for it. Excellent. I mean, it's a really powerful way to give support to someone. 100%. Yeah. And you learn too. I think, in the moment, I met with a mentor this week. She's now not working and her mentee is. I just saw that. So the mentee, the participants now progressed into work and the mentor is between jobs. And he's obviously still supporting the mentee. But actually, there's some, you know, the relationship is... You'll find a job soon. Exactly. The relationship is two way and, you know, we can all learn things from each other, can't we? Yeah, you know, being a mentor and the mentorship relationship is really interesting. A lot of, there's been a big increase in that. And even in the world of work and I think it's useful for everyone to have a mentor, whatever level you are in your career. It's always nice to just chat to someone who's maybe not as connected with your job. Absolutely. Situation is normal. What can people do to get involved if they're not a member and they're keen to support in some way? So become a member. We ask that you have a commitment to social impact and you pay the membership. So yeah, if you apply, it's £700 for a membership. So it's actually for the fabulous place that it is, really. Yes, yeah. Good value and corporate membership as well. So you can join as a company. Awesome. Mentoring is open to non-members as well. So if you want to be a member, then you can access that. You can also, we have loads of art, which is for sale. The art is awesome. People can donate and fundraise for us if they want to. And you can't come in to the house unless you're a member. So we do have a number of events that are open to the public. So Friday nights we have kind of Fonica. We have a number of a DJ nights in there. Yeah, we have concerts in the church. So there's a number of events that non-members can buy tickets for. Yeah, so if you want to come and have a look around the place before you commit, then you can come a lot to the event. We'll put the various links on the show notes so people can click through to the website and get involved. And then you're on Twitter, Instagram, one of that stuff. We are, absolutely. Hasasent Barnabas, yeah. Awesome. Cool, well thank you so much. We really love you to speak to you. Thank you. And I will see you around the club and keep up all the good work. Brilliant, thanks a lot. Thank you. Cheers. Hey, folks, thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places.